Tristan Shaw's Blog, page 3
May 19, 2018
The Farmer Who Traveled 800,000,000 Miles
Buck Nelson: Farmer, contactee, and UFO convention organizer.
In the early days of contactees and UFOs, the Missouri farmer Buck Nelson was a breath of fresh air. While other contactees figured talking eloquently and lying about their academic credentials would make their stories believable, the plain-speaking Nelson admitted his education didn’t go any further than the sixth grade. He presented himself as a humble, hard-working guy, and though Nelson’s stories were every bit as ridiculous as his contemporaries, they have an amusing, folksy kind of charm to them.
Fortunately, Nelson was kind (and brave) enough to share his encounters of giant space dogs and Venusian English teachers in a booklet he published in 1956, the bluntly titled “My Trip to Mars, the Moon, and Venus.” For a journey that covered, as an opening page calculates it, an astonishing 800,000,000 miles, the booklet is short and to the point. As far as I know, it’s the only full-length piece of work Nelson ever wrote, and for that, we’ll have to assume it’s the definitive account of his tale.
Before his epic space odyssey, Nelson claimed to have had four earlier contacts with aliens. The first happened on July 30, 1954, when Nelson noticed three UFOs flying outside his home. He took a few pictures and waved a flashlight at the saucers, thinking they would come down and land. I have no idea whether waving a flashlight is offensive in Venusian culture, but the UFOs responded to Nelson’s request by shooting him with a ray of light and knocking him onto the ground. The attack had paralyzed him for a moment, but oddly enough, healed some long-suffering back pain and improved Nelson’s eyesight.
The subsequent encounters were much less violent. The occupants of the UFOs talked to Nelson during the second encounter, and they finally showed themselves on the third. On March 5, 1955, the colorful crew visited Nelson at his home, consisting of an earthling, two Venusians, and a giant space dog. The earthling was a young man named Bucky. Bucky was born in Colorado, but his parents sent him to be brought up on Venus, where he lived and taught English. (Fun fact: Nelson later learned that Bucky was a distant cousin.)
The Venusian guests were both older men. The older of the pair never mentioned his name, but the other said that his name was the distinctly Venusian Bob Solomon, and that he was 200-years-old. Frankly, none of these people are as interesting as the dog though, a 385-pound giant named Bo. On her hind legs, Bo stood even taller than Buck Nelson, and she could shake hands (eh, paws) just like a human.
Over the space of an hour, the friendly crew marveled over Nelson’s ordinary home, and invited him to come along for a trip to outer space sometime. On April 24, Nelson’s friends picked him and his dog Teddy up for the promised trip. Before entering their UFO, Nelson was given the Venusians’ “Twelve Laws of God,” a set of rules that pretty much just updated the Ten Commandments. Unlike the Ten Commandments though, Nelson tells us that the people of outer space actually listen to these rules, and hence are able to live without such destructive influences as war, disease, jails, and- truly the Devil’s liquid- tea.
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After writing the Twelve Laws down for all mankind, Nelson was allowed to enter the spaceship. His hosts let him fiddle around with the controls, laughing at him when he accidentally flew the ship upside down. First the crew visited Mars, then the moon, and then Venus. Nelson was introduced to various leaders, and sampled the local cuisine on each stop. Generally, the inhabitants of Mars, the moon, and Venus were like earthlings. They ate a lot of fruits and vegetables, and like Buck Nelson, wore overalls. They lived for a long time, using natural medicine and hypnotism to treat pain.
Of the three destinations, Nelson spent the longest amount of time on Venus. He noted that Venusian cars lacked wheels, but could float three to five feet off the ground. Because the cars could float, Venus had no roads. Because there were no roads or even government buildings, the Venusians paid very little in taxes. They worked only an hour a day, and spent much of their time visiting and socializing with others. For entertainment, the Venusians had “Book Machines,” computer-like devices that could read books and play music.
When Nelson was dropped back off on Earth, he found that he was gone for three days. Nelson promised his extraterrestrial friends that he would tell everybody about the trip. He traveled to Detroit to talk at a “saucer club,” and was allegedly interviewed by astronomers and scientists in Chicago. (Nelson claims these scientists were positive, based on his descriptions, that he had visited the Moon.) Interested in his story, men from the Armed Forces investigated Nelson as well, looking over his house and buying the pair of overalls he wore on his space odyssey. (Again, we have only Nelson’s word to confirm this.)
On December 25, 1955, Bucky showed up at Nelson’s house to deliver a message. It seems Nelson recorded Bucky’s voice, but I can’t find any trace of a recording. In the booklet, however, Nelson writes Bucky’s message down verbatim. To sum it up, Bucky lovingly warned mankind to give up atomic weapons, otherwise America would destroy itself fighting a war on its soil. The rest of that Christmas was pretty cheerful; Nelson hosted some other guests, and one of these men tried selling Bucky insurance.
Traveling across the country, talking on and on about Bucky and Bo, and his 800,000,000 mile journey, Nelson earned a bit of a following among people interested in aliens and flying saucers. He was a guest on radio and TV shows, and spoke in churches as well. Since the aliens apparently recognized how to create a brand, they told Nelson that it was best he always wore overalls in his public appearances. “I think it is something which will fit in with their future plans for me,” Nelson speculates in his booklet.
For a while, Buck Nelson had a good thing going on. Between 1954 and 1966, Nelson held UFO conventions on his farm, featuring, according to one 1961 poster, music, telescopes, fried chicken, and “speakers who have contacted our space brothers.” Nelson also sold copies of his booklet, along with pieces of dog hair he took off Bo. Ultimately, however, Buck Nelson and his overalls ended up playing no great cosmic significance. The last few years of his UFO convention saw disappointing turn-outs, and Nelson is believed to have spent the rest of his life in California, staying with relatives until his death in 1982.
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May 7, 2018
The Girl Who Ate Fairy Food
Drawing of Ann Jefferies and her fairies, from Robert Hunt’s “Popular Romances of the West of England.”
In 1696, the English printer Moses Pitt wrote a peculiar letter to Edward Fowler, Bishop of Gloucester, detailing the old case of a woman named Ann Jefferies. Some five decades earlier, when Moses was a boy, Ann worked as a servant girl for the Pitt family. At the age of 19, Ann allegedly came into contact with fairies and developed healing powers. While she had her supporters, Ann’s claims caused a scandal, and ultimately led to trouble with the law.
According to Moses, the story began on a day in 1645, when Ann sat knitting in the Pitts’ garden in the little village of St. Teath. As Ann sat there, minding her own business, six little fairies dressed in green suddenly flew over the garden hedge. I’d imagine most people would be delighted to spot fairies, but Ann was so frightened by the sight that she fell into convulsions.
These convulsive fits lasted for months. While the Pitt family nursed her back to health, Ann kept the fairy sighting a secret. She was so weak that she couldn’t stand on her feet, and the Pitts had to be careful not to upset her, because the slightest annoyance would send Ann into another fit.
By harvest-time, Ann had recovered a little strength. One afternoon, she was alone in the house with Mrs.Pitt. Mrs. Pitt had an errand to run, but didn’t want to leave Ann unattended, in case she might accidentally set the house on fire. (How or why Ann might have accomplished such a feat in her illness isn’t explained in Moses’ letter.) For the safety of all, Mrs. Pitt moved Ann into the garden, where she waited for Mrs. Pitt to come back.
While coming home from her errand, Mrs.Pitt accidentally slipped and hurt her leg. The pain was very bad, so a neighbor on horseback had to take her home. Once Mrs. Pitt was back, a servant was called to fetch a horse and ride eight miles away to get a doctor. Just then, Ann came in and insisted on seeing Mrs. Pitt’s leg.
Cautious that refusing would send the girl into a fit, Mrs. Pitt showed Ann the injured limb. With her eyes on the leg, Ann rested it on her lap and stroked it with her hand. Amazingly, Mrs. Pitt’s pain began to go away. The mere touch of Ann’s hand, in fact, worked so well that Mrs. Pitt called the doctor off.
After demonstrating these new healing powers, Ann confessed the cause of her fits: the fairies. Ever since that day in the garden, Ann was constantly attended by fairies who always showed themselves in even numbers. Since Ann was forced out of the house against her will, six of the fairies decided to teach Mrs. Pitt a lesson, deliberately causing her to trip.( Evidently, Mrs. Pitt was too satisfied with Ann’s new powers to be angry that her servant’s fairies had conspired to break her leg.)
The fame of Ann and her magic touch spread across Cornwall, and soon all sorts of sick people came to her to be healed, some of them coming from as far away as London. Ann never asked for money for these services. It was said that she could also predict who was coming to visit her, before the actual guest arrived.
At the same time, Ann stopped eating human food. For six months, Ann persisted on fairy food, gifted to her by her friends. Moses Pitt had the good fortune to try this food. While visiting Ann in her room, Moses was given a piece of fairy bread. In his letter, he remarked that “I think it was the most delicious Bread that ever I did eat either before or since.”
Naturally, all this hullabaloo about healing and fairy food attracted the attention of the authorities. Some magistrates and ministers visited Ann at the Pitts’ house and questioned her about her little friends. The ministers were convinced that the fairies were evil spirits sent by the Devil. They advised Ann to ignore them and have nothing to do with them.
Later that night, Ann was sitting with the Pitts at a fire when she said the fairies began to call her. The family pled with her not to go, but on the third calling, Ann retired into her room. When she came back out, she held a Bible in her hand. The fairies, Ann said, recommended that the magistrates and ministers read the following Bible passage: “Dearly beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits if they be of God. Because many false prophets are gone out into the world.”
Even though the good fairy folk were clearly virtuous Christians, quoting scripture wasn’t enough for the powers that be. One of the cruelest magistrates of the day, Jan Tregeagle, got wind of Ann’s stories. Tregeagle was a notoriously vicious man; some claimed he sold his soul to the devil, and after his death, his spirit was said to haunt Cornwall.
Tregeagle issued a warrant for Ann’s arrest, and she was jailed eight miles away in Bodmin. During her imprisonment, Tregeagle starved Ann. Mrs. Pitt and Moses were called in to testify, and Moses was questioned to make sure that he didn’t bring Ann any food. Eventually, Ann was moved to Tregeagle’s house and then let go after a time. She was forbidden, however, to live with the Pitts.
From here, Ann went to live with Mr. Pitt’s sister, a widow named Francis Tom. Ann apparently demonstrated healing powers here too. Later, she went to live with her brother, and then she married a man named William Warden. The historical record isn’t very clear about her fate, but Ann was still alive when Moses wrote his letter in 1696. By that time, it seems the elderly Ann had come to regret the whole affair. When Pitt’s brother-in-law reached out to her in 1693, Ann refused to talk about the fairies. She said that even if her own father were alive, she wouldn’t say a word about them to him.
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April 30, 2018
Invasion of the Russian Robotoids
Forget the Body Snatchers- the Russian Robotoids are here!
Between June 1975 and November 1982, conspiracy theorist Peter Beter released a series of cassette tapes that he called “audio letters.” In these tapes, the former lawyer and financier claimed that the world was being fought over by three shadowy factions:the Rockefeller family, the Russians, and a Bolshevik-Zionist alliance. According to Beter lore, the Russian government was controlled by a group of virtuous Christians, while the Rockefellers and Bolshevik-Zionists were nefarious evil-doers attempting to take control of the world. By the time Beter concluded his letters, the Bolshevik-Zionists had infiltrated the American government, with the Rockefellers and Russians teaming up to stop them.
It’s a needlessly complicated story, and so utterly outlandish that it borders on unintentional comedy. Of course, theories involving antisemitism, globalist bankers, and Russians are a dime-a-dozen among conspiracy theorists, but Beter makes things stupider by throwing in doppelganger robots. These “organic robotoids,” as Beter called them, were apparently indispensable in the Bolshevik-Rockefeller-Russian War.
The origins of the organic robotoids stretch back to 1975, when Russian scientists succeeded in creating the first model of the machine in secret. Organic robotoids are made from a person’s body cells, and are meant to work as body doubles. While manufactured and programmed like computers, robotoids are doomed to eat, bleed and die like conventional meatbags. They can’t reproduce, however, and their shelf-life lasts only a couple of weeks or months at the most. Fortunately, a robotoid can be made in a matter of hours, ensuring a steady supply of doppelgangers indistinguishable from their source.
When Beter broke this bombshell revelation in 1979, intelligence about the robotoids had already leaked to the United States. American robotoid engineering paled in comparison to the Russian variety, but that didn’t stop the CIA from attempting to use it. In April 1977, for example, the CIA tried to create a robotoid to replace General Gordon S. Brown, an air force general who Beter claimed prevented the outbreak of a nuclear war.
Brown’s robotoid was a complete failure, and the real Brown was murdered to cover up what he knew about the latest development in technological warfare. For publicity reasons, Brown was replaced with a real human double. After serving the government’s purposes, Brown’s double faked his death and was then shot to death for real on December 11, 1978. (In actuality, General Brown died from cancer, but let’s not let facts ruin Beter’s story.)
After the Great Brown Double Doubles Fiasco, an intelligence war was raged with robotoids in the United States. In the Beter mythos, there was a shadowy civil war in Russia between Christians and “Bolsheviks.” The Christians, of course, are the good guys, and the Rothschild-controlled Bolsheviks are communist atheists who have managed to infiltrate the United States. Directed by a Rockefeller “Hit List,” the good Russians dispatched robotoids to kill the Bolshevik agents in the U.S. This second infiltration of the American government ran all the way up to President Jimmy Carter; for reasons I’ll never properly understand, the Russians replaced Carter and his family with robotoic doubles, running at one point three Jimmy Carter robotoids simultaneously.
By October 1979, when Beter recorded his 51st audio letter, the Russians had used over eighteen Jimmy Carter robotoids in their global fight for justice. The Bolsheviks, meanwhile, had begun to fight back with similar machinations called “synthetic automatons.” This intelligence war resulted in a continually shifting balance of power. “When the White House is occupied by Bolshevik synthetics,” Beter notes, “American policy reflects the Bolshevik line; but whenever the Russians manage to replace synthetics with their own robotoids, White House policy is made in Moscow.”
Unfortunately, Peter Beter stopped recording his audio letters in 1982, leaving the epic saga of the Bolshevik-Rockefeller-Russian War on a cliffhanger. I suppose the world shall never know whether the robotoids succeeded in repelling the Bolshevik synthetic menace. Beter (or possibly his double) died in 1987, and while his wild tales had a cult following in their day, his conspiracy theories are little remembered today. If you’re curious, or in need of a good laugh though, this sympathetic website here has collected all of Beter’s ravings, along with a handy summary of his masterpiece.
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March 11, 2018
Hieronyma and Her Incubus
An 1879 painting of an incubus.
The 17th century priest Ludovico Maria Sinistrari was a thinker who tackled some of the most pressing questions of his time. Could demons and humans, for example, have sex? Could they have children? Theologically-speaking, which is the greater evil: carnal knowledge of the family dog, or screwing a succubus? If you’re one of the half-dozen people who lay in bed at night pondering such enigmas, then boy does Father Sinistrari have a book for you!
Sinistrari, an Inquisition-associated writer, concerned himself with what the Catholic Church regarded as sinful sexuality. His work touches on homosexuality, sodomy, and demoniality, the act of sexual intercourse between a person and a demon. Sinistrari’s treatise on that last subject, Demoniality, is a bit mysterious. It was probably written in the late 1690s, but its manuscript wasn’t discovered until 1872, when the French publisher Isidore Liseux bought it from an English bookseller. (Some scholars have argued the treatise is a forgery, but the academic Alexandra Nagel makes a good case for its authenticity in a research paper available here.)
Essentially, Demoniality claims that demons like incubuses and succubuses are real, and similar to humans. It’s entirely possible, and considerably sinful, to have sex with one. It’s also possible to have children with such demons; Alexander the Great, Martin Luther, and Plato were all the result of demon-human elopements. While there’s a lot of theological theorizing- including the contemplation of demon semen- Sinistrari also discusses some case studies. In one particular story about a woman and an incubus, Sinistrari claim that he was an eye-witness, and that he interviewed “numerous persons” to corroborate the account.
Some twenty-five years before he wrote Demoniality, Sinistrari says that he worked as a lecturer in the city of Pavia. During that same time, there was a “married woman of unimpeachable morality” named Hieronyma who also lived in the city. One day, Hieronyma kneaded some bread and gave it to a baker to finish off. After baking it in the oven, the man dropped the bread off at Hieronyma’s house, along with a “large cake of peculiar shape” she didn’t remember giving him. Since the baker didn’t bake any other customers’ bread that day, he insisted the cake must have been Hieronyma’s. Hieronyma was easily convinced to take the cake, and she later ate it with her daughter, husband, and servant.
The next night, Hieronyma was sleeping in bed with her husband when a shrill voice woke her up and whispered in her ear, asking her how she liked the cake. Spooked, Hieronyma made the sign of the cross and called out the names of Jesus and Mary, but the voice still wouldn’t shut up. “I am prepared to do any thing to please you,” it crooned, “I am captivated by your beauty, and desire nothing more than to enjoy your embraces.” For the next half-hour or so, as she chanted the names of Jesus and Mary to defend herself, Hieronyma felt an invisible force kissing her cheeks.
In the morning, presumably while her husband continued to sleep like a log, Hieronyma visited her confessor and revealed what happened. The confessor recommended that Hieronyma protect herself with holy relics, but when the incubus continued to kiss and sweet-talk Hieronyma night after night, a full-fledged exorcism was arranged. A group of holy-men exorcised Hieronyma herself, and just to be sure everything was demon-free, also blessed her bed, bedroom, and house.
Still, the incubus was determined to woo Hieronyma. The exorcism failed, and the demon began to appear as a young man, with golden locks of hair and beautiful green eyes. Whenever Hieronyma had company, the incubus would crash the party, kissing her hand and pledging his eternal love. “She alone saw and heard him,” Sinistrari notes, “for every body else, he was not to be seen.”
Increasingly, the incubus lost his patience, and figured more drastic measures were needed to seduce Hieronyma. He would steal Hieronyma holy relics and jewelry, and attack her as well, leaving bruises on her body that would disappear after only a day or two. Other times, while Hieronyma was nursing her daughter, the incubus would snatch the poor babe and hide her on the roof. (After all, what better way to win somebody’s heart than kidnapping their child?)
When beatings and kidnapping failed to turn Hieronyma on, the incubus decided to up the ante again. In one nightly incident, after being rejected by Hieronyma for the umpteenth time, the incubus built a wall around Hieronyma and her husband’s bed. The impromptu wall was so high, according to Sinistrari, that the couple actually needed a ladder to get over it. Fortunately, the incubus was as poor a builder as seducer, and the wall was easily broken apart. For a while, the parts were stashed in a corner, where “they were seen by many who came to look at them,” before inexplicably disappearing.
In another notable episode, Hieronyma’s husband held a dinner party for a bunch of military friends on St. Stephen’s Day. The servants had everything ready to go, when the dinner table, along with all the bottles, dishes, glasses, kettles, jugs, and saucepans, disappeared into thin air. One of the guests, suspecting the disappearances to be a trick, searched around the room for the table to no avail. Confused and hungry, the guests were escorted to the front door, where they suddenly heard a loud noise coming from the dining-room.
Just then, a servant came to the guests and said that the table had been mysteriously replaced, and all the food in the kitchen swapped with exotic wine and elaborate dishes. Understandably, a couple of the guests were a bit hesitant about eating food that spontaneously appeared out of nowhere. When everybody finally had a taste though, all agreed it was delicious. Once the feast was over, the dishes and food vanished before the party-goers’ eyes, and the food that had been missing reappeared.
Following the most perplexing St. Stephen’s Day ever, Sinistrari mentions one more chapter in the one-sided romance of Hieronyma and her incubus. One morning, after many more months of dealing with the demon, Hieronyma went walking to church dressed like Bernardine of Feltre, a friar worshiped by her local church. The moment Hieronyma reached the church, “her clothes and ornaments fell off to the ground, and disappeared in a gust of wind, leaving her stark naked.” Immediately, two chivalrous chevaliers sprang into action, covered Hieronyma with their cloaks, and rushed her home.
“I might relate many other most surprising tricks which the Incubus played on her,” Sinistrari concludes,”were it not wearisome. Suffice it to say that, for a number of years he persevered in his temptation of her, but that finding at last that he was losing his pains, he desisted from his vexatious importunities.” With the advent of Tinder and other such things, I hope the incubus is doing better for himself these days.
Be sure to check out more offbeat stories of crime, folklore, and history in my e-book, 20 Unsolved Mysteries of Japan, available on Amazon for Kindle.
February 19, 2018
The Alien Who Needed a New Head
A magazine photo of Mr.F, the baffled protagonist of today’s story.
During the 1970s, Japan was swept by a boom of new interest in the occult. Spoon-bending, Nostradamus, New Age religions, and kokkuri– the Japanese equivalent of ouija boards- were taken up by a number of Japanese. This golden age of hokum also produced some of the country’s most infamous UFO encounters, such as the Kofu Incident, in which a pair of second graders ran into a fanged-midget, and the Nikoro Incident, which involved an even shorter variety of extraterrestrial octopuses. Last week, while browsing an excellent Japanese blog, I had the pleasure of stumbling on a much more obscure case: the story of a 31-year-old truck driver known only as Mr. F.
On September 3, 1974, Mr. F had to deliver a load of furniture bound for Takamatsu, a city in Kagawa Prefecture. He had to reach Uno Port in Tamano, Okayama Prefecture by 7 AM, where the goods would be shipped south to Takamatsu. In the early morning, while driving on the National Route 30 highway, Mr. F got tired and stopped for a bit to eat some udon noodles.
After getting back on the road, Mr. F noticed a body of silvery-white light in the sky. The light, of course, was a flying saucer, and it noiselessly landed some 10 meters (32 feet) away. What happened next was a bit hazy, but after falling unconscious, Mr. F woke up to find a strange woman sitting in his passenger seat.
Mr. F’s unexpected visitor had a face that resembled a mask, with two eyes and no other features. Her hair fell to her shoulders, her height looked to be about 160 CM (5’3 for us Americans), and her clothes looked like they were made of rubber. Oh, and she had a horn-like antenna on the top of her head. Naturally, Mr. F didn’t feel very comfortable at the sight of what must have been the galaxy’s homeliest female.
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Mr.F’s drawing of the galaxy’s homeliest female.
Speaking in a mechanical voice, the woman said she’d come to earth, but complained that “There’s something wrong with my head, so I want you to replace it.” When the confused trucker asked how, the alien instructed to press three buttons on her chest. After following her instructions, Mr. F popped his passenger’s head off. Next, he was told to press the buttons in the reverse order, and then he put a new, identical-looking head on the alien. (Unless he kept spares in his glove compartment, I have no idea where Mr. F got this other head.)
During the rest of the encounter, Mr. F and the alien talked for a while. She said there were more of her people on earth, but they weren’t interested in conquering the planet. (Woo-hoo!) They were essentially refugees, settling on our planet because their sun had collided with another star. They were also more advanced than humans, and had computers in their heads, which allowed them to speak in earthly languages. Before disappearing- and Mr. F couldn’t remember how- the alien promised they would meet again someday.
The next thing Mr. F remembered, he was back driving on the road, almost to his destination. He was right on time too, at 7 AM, yet he couldn’t account for some 20 minutes. Later, when he got home, Mr. F bluntly told his wife, “I talked to an alien today and replaced its head.” The news went about as well as expected; Mrs. F laughed and asked if her husband was tired.
Apparently, Mr. F hoped his colleagues would be a bit more open-minded. He wrote about the encounter in a company newsletter, to equally mocking results. A year-and-a-half later, Mr. F caught a break though, and was featured in the June 1976 issue of UFO and Universe (UFOと宇宙) magazine. After the encounter, Mr. F said he felt no mental or physical changes to his body, though he thought he saw the UFO again during another drive a few months later.
As surely confused as the rest of us, Mr. F also reported that he didn’t know why the alien chose him specifically to swap her head. Now I’m going to venture a personal guess here- But perhaps the alien lied about her species’ intentions, and we’re all going to have to get used to switching our overlords’ vastly superior, computerized noggins?
Be sure to check out more offbeat stories of Japanese crime, folklore, and history in my e-book, 20 Unsolved Mysteries of Japan, available on Amazon for Kindle.
August 21, 2017
The Demon of Spreyton
Modern-day picture of Spreyton, England
In November 1682, Francis Fey was a 20-year-old servant in the service of Philip Furze, a landowner who lived in the little English village of Spreyton. One day, while in a field near his employer’s house, Francis was puzzled to see Philip’s father outside. The elder Furze was walking with his staff, and like the many moles he’d once whacked, had long been dead.
Fortunately, Old Furze’s ghost had no intention of whacking Francis. Instead, Furze had returned from the dead to sort out some problems with his will. He explained that two beneficiaries were each owed ten shillings, and a sister in the near-by town of Totnes was owed twenty. So long as all three beneficiaries got their money, Furze promised not to haunt Francis.
Francis ran to the first two beneficiaries without any problems. Furze’s sister in Totnes was a bit more difficult; she refused to take her share, suspecting it’d been sent by the Devil. That night, Furze appeared to Francis again, telling him to buy a ring worth twenty shillings. Furze’s sister had no qualms with the ring, so Francis figured he was free and headed back home.
As part of their agreement, Furze should have left Francis alone. But as Francis rode into Spreyton, Furze materialized yet again. Unfortunately, this time, the ghost did have the intention of beating Francis. It appeared behind Francis as he rode his horse, clinging to his waist and then throwing him to the ground. The fun didn’t stop there either. Once Francis got back to Philip’s farm, his horse jumped and landed twenty-five feet away.
Things only got worse for Francis from here. The elder Furze never showed up again, but a second ghost, that of Furze’s equally dead wife, began to haunt the poor young man. This specter, nicknamed “The Demon of Spreyton,” delighted in all sorts of bizarre cruelty. Her harassment of Francis, who thought she was a good person while she was alive, is a long list of baffling tortures.
Normally, the Demon looked as she did when she was alive. Sometimes, however, she appeared as a fire-breathing dog. On another occasion, she became a horse and jumped through a window, shattering only a single pane of the glass. She’d also rip the clothes off Francis and another servant, and took pleasure in grabbing wigs off people’s heads.
The Demon could be pretty violent too. In one incident, invisible hands seized Francis and bashed his head against the wall. The attack was so bad that a doctor examined Francis, and for reasons of 17th century medicine, decided to bleed him. After the doctor was done, the ligatures on Francis flew off, wrapped around his waist, and nearly suffocated him.
In another incident, Francis’s shoelaces came undone by themselves. (Horror of horrors!) One of the laces flew out of Francis’s shoe, traveled to the other side of the room, and then tried crawling back to the other shoelace. When a maid who saw everything grabbed the free-wheeling lace, it curled around her hand like an eel.
The day before Easter, the Demon grabbed Francis outside and carried him into the air upside down. When the other servants of the house realized Francis was missing, they searched for a half hour until he was found delirious in a bog. He sang and whistled in a strange trance, and his wig was found on the top branch of a tree.
Francis recovered a little from his adventure, but his limbs still felt really numb from being in the bog. For reasons of 17th century medicine, he was moved to Crediton, where he received what must have been the most cutting-edge bloodletting available.
After Francis was properly bled, his friends visited and noticed that his forehead was swollen and bleeding. This turned out not to be a cut from the doctor. According to Francis, a bird carrying a rock in its beak flew into the room and bashed his head in. His friends searched the room for the rock, but only ended up finding a brass weight.
Sadly, the ultimate fate of Francis Fey is lost to history. The only source for his story comes from a letter written by an anonymous “Person of Quality” to a man in London. The letter, dated May 11, 1683, was published as a pamphlet sometime that same year. Of Francis, it concludes that “The young man will be 21 if he lives to August next.” We can only hope that the bird with the rock never came back to finish what it started.
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August 7, 2017
A Haunting on Fuencarral Street
Diego de Torres Villarroel
It would probably be easier to tell you what the 18th century Spanish writer Diego de Torres Villarroel didn’t do. According to his highly picaresque autobiography, Torres did all sorts of different jobs, including working as a bullfighter, dancer, soldier, lock picker, astrologer, and math professor. He was also said to be a prophet, although his apparent predictions of the death of the Spanish King Louis I and the French Revolution were more vague coincidences than actual prophecies.
In 1723, after moving to Madrid, a poverty-stricken Torres was forced to work as a smuggler to get by. One day, Torres’ fortunes changed when a messenger from Josepha de Figueroa, the Countess of Arcos, paid him a visit. The messenger looked pale and sick, and explained that the Countess wanted Torres to come stay at her house. For the past three nights, the Countess’ home had been knocked by loud, unexplained noises.
The Countess was afraid that her house, which was located on Fuencarral Street, was being haunted by a duende. In Spanish folklore, duendes are creatures similar to goblins, tricksters who come into people’s homes to harass them and drive them crazy with loud noises. (Our demented friends from The House of the Lions, the follets, are technically a Catalan variety of duende.)
Torres was skeptical about the story, but agreed to investigate the haunting. When he arrived at the Countess’ house, he found the servants pale and quiet, and the Countess terrified. That night, they all banded together and slept in the same bedroom, Torres included.
At 1 AM, Torres was woken up by the sound of a loud blow. While everybody else panicked, Torres jumped up and ran to the source of the sound with a light and sword. He tried looking for the source in the attic, but found nothing. The noise continued banging until 3:30 AM, but wherever Torres looked, he couldn’t find where it was coming from.
For the next eleven nights, Torres stayed with the Countess and continued to look for an explanation. Aside from the loud noises, the house experienced other strange phenomenon as well. Locked doors would break open by themselves, for example, and bursts of wind would put out lights that weren’t anywhere near doors or windows.
In one incident, Torres saw six pictures fall to the floor, pulled and placed back on their original spots by an invisible force. On another night, he heard a noise so loud that he thought a building had collapsed. When he went to go fetch some water, the sound of footsteps followed him all the way there. Other times, members of the household would hear dishes being thrown against the kitchen wall. When they checked the kitchen, however, nothing was broken.
After the fourteenth night, the Countess got the memo that this duende wasn’t leaving anytime soon. Instead of staying and being terrorized any longer, she wisely moved into a new house on another street. For the help Torres gave, along with the good behavior he demonstrated, the Countess invited him to live at the peaceful, non-haunted house. He ended up staying two years there, until the Countess married and Torres went off to live with a marquis.
Diego de Torres Villarroel would later write about this story twice, once in 1738 and again in his 1742 autobiography. Whether the haunting was the result of a mischievous goblin, an ancient Moor burial ground, or an elaborate prank, Torres didn’t bother to speculate. He also didn’t provide the house’s address, or say whether it continued to be haunted after the Countess moved out. Whatever the cause, the incident was certainly beneficial for Torres, who went from life-threatening poverty to living a cozy, rent-free existence with a countess.
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July 24, 2017
A Skeptical Law Student
Antonio de Torquemada.
In the “Garden of Curious Flowers (1570),” a hodgepodge work of miscellanies that had the proud distinction of being banned by the Inquisition, the Spanish author Antonio de Torquemada recounted a bizarre story that many people in Italy and Spain could supposedly vouch for. The tale concerned a student named Juan Vázquez de Ayola, who with two of his friends went to Bologna to study law.
While searching for a place to stay, the Spaniards asked some local men in the street if they knew any places friendly to foreigners. One of the men, smiling, pointed to a boarded-up house. His friends told the Spaniards that this was meant to be a good old-fashioned Bolognese joke; the house had been unavailable the past twelve years because it was haunted. Ayola, playing the straight man, asked if he could have the keys.
The owner of the house did his best to turn the students away. He told them all about the horrible things people had seen there, but the Spaniards laughed them off. They were modern 16th century college boys, dammit, and they didn’t believe in anything as silly as ghosts. So the owner coughed up the keys and the Spaniards got themselves a haunted house.
After moving in, the Spaniards had a hard time finding servants for their new home. They were able to hire one woman as a cook, but she refused to do her job inside the house. A month passed, and much to the astonishment of the Bolognese, the Spaniards were still living in the house without having seen or heard anything strange.
This all changed one night, however, when Ayola was alone in his study and the other two Spaniards were asleep. Around midnight, Ayola’s reading was interrupted by the sound of something heavy trudging across the floor downstairs. His heart pounding, Ayola thought about waking his friends up, but he was too scared to move. As the noise rattled up the stairs, Ayola had no choice but to check it out. He grabbed a sword and candle and left the room.
It turned out the stories were true: Standing at the staircase was a tall skeleton covered in chains. Some moments passed, and Ayola noticed that the skeleton had stopped moving. It simply stood there, being quiet and very much undead. Mustering up all his machismo, Ayola asked his chained visitor if there were anything he could help it with. The skeleton simply shook its head and pointed a bony finger down the staircase.
It wanted Ayola to follow it.
At a snail’s pace, the chained skeleton led Ayola from the house into the courtyard. From there, they went into the garden. At the sight of a well, Ayola stopped in his tracks, afraid that the skeleton wanted to toss him into a watery grave. (Because who would suspect the skeleton, right? It’d be the perfect crime!)
The skeleton motioned for Ayola to be calm. It pointed to a spot farther on, and just as they reached it, the skeleton vanished before Ayola’s eyes. The confused Spaniard called for the apparition to come back, but some time passed and he remained alone. Before going back inside, Ayola marked the spot where the skeleton disappeared by digging up some grass.
After waking his friends up, Ayola told them everything that had happened. Unusually, in a city where everyone believed his house was haunted, Ayola worried that nobody would believe his story. He insisted on keeping it a secret, but it eventually leaked out to his neighbors and the chief magistrate.
The law student swore by oath that everything he saw was true. In the garden, he showed the authorities the spot where the skeleton had disappeared. Digging the spot up, the authorities discovered a grave which contained an unusually large, chained skeleton. Naturally, such an intriguing find called for an investigation, but nobody could say who the skeleton was. The only guess was that it might have belonged to somebody who used to live in the house.
Though it was never identified, the skeleton apparently found peace. There weren’t any more strange noises or shenanigans in the house in Bologna. As for Juan Vázquez de Ayola, he returned to Spain and went on to hold many important offices under the king.
July 11, 2017
How Gnomes Drove an Artist to Kill Herself
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The Castle of La Boca, named after the neighborhood in Buenos Aires where it stands, is a big and beautiful representation of Catalan modernism. It’s also supposedly haunted, which is why many people call the building’s tower “The Ghost Tower.” The eponymous ghost of the tower is said to haunt the top floor, where people have heard anguished shouts and disembodied footsteps.
According to legend, the ghost is a painter named Clementina, a young art student who lived there a century ago. The story behind Clementina’s demise involves a nostalgic rancher, a noisy reporter, and a bunch of mischievous follets, a creature in Catalan folklore similar to gnomes.
The story begins with the estanciera (rancher) Maria Luisa Auvert Arnaud. Auvert owned a very profitable estancia, a rural estate like a ranch, making her one of the wealthiest people in Buenos Aires. In the early 20th century, Argentina was experiencing a great boom in immigration from Europe. Hoping to make some money off these new Argentinians, Auvert bought a plot of land in La Boca and planned to get into real estate.
Despite her French-sounding name, Auvert’s family had roots in Catalonia. On her new land, Auvert hired the Catalan architect Guillermo Alvarez to build a house that would remind her of her family’s homeland. To maximize the Catalan flavor, Auvert imported furniture and plants from the old country, including some mushrooms she put on the balconies.
When the construction was completed in 1908, Auvert was so happy with the final product that she dropped the idea of renting the building and took the house for herself. The Castle should have been her dream home, but Auvert quietly packed her bags after living there for only a year. Nobody knew why she moved so suddenly, though neighbors said they sometimes heard her and her servants yelling at something at night.
The house’s next owner, a real estate agent, decided to rent its rooms out. Clementina, a young painter from the city of Venado Tuerto, moved into the top floor. Though young, Clementina was popular and quite talented. Her increasing fame eventually brought the attention of Eleonora, a journalist interested in her work.
At a meeting with Eleonora, Clementina showed the journalist her studio. Things looked very bright for her career, and she was finishing work on a painting that she considered her magnum opus. It seemed like the young artist couldn’t be any happier. She must have been especially flattered when Eleonora took some photos of her paintings.
Shockingly, a couple nights after Eleonara’s visit, Clementina killed herself by jumping off her balcony. Her friends and neighbors were stunned. She had so much going for herself, it just didn’t make sense. Why would Clementina take her own life?
Meanwhile, Eleonora got her photos developed. Most of the photos came out fine, save for the picture of Clementina’s unfinished painting. In that particular photo, Eleonora noticed three little creatures in the studio. Stumped, she launched an investigation into Clementina’s suicide and the history of The Castle of La Boca.
Eleonora’s search for answers led her to Maria Luisa Auvert Arnaud, who was then living in a little town called Rauch. After contacting Auvert by phone, Eleonora took a train to Rauch and interviewed Auvert in her garden. There, Auvert confessed the terrible truth about her old house… There were gnomes living in it. Not the tacky lawn ornament variety either, but living, breathing follets.
Auvert explained that follets live in the forests of Catalonia and sleep in mushrooms. Unfortunately, the mushrooms Auvert imported for the house turned out to be carrying follets. At first, the gnomes didn’t cause any trouble. Then one of the follets made a pass at a maid, and a disgusted male servant threw the little guy against the wall.
Everything went downhill from there. The follets made the house a living hell, cutting furniture legs off and throwing knives in the air. It was far too dangerous to stay, so Auvert and her servants moved out. Since Auvert was afraid of being labeled crazy if the story leaked out, none of the servants were allowed to talk about what happened.
After promising to keep the story a secret, Eleonora headed back to Buenos Aires. She never figured out what happened to Clementina, but the story still has an explanation for the mystery: The follets were angry that their pictures were taken. In revenge, they hid her tools and flung paint on her unfinished masterpiece, driving the young artist mad. When she couldn’t take it anymore, Clementina impulsively ran out her room and jumped.
Ever since her death, Clementina has haunted her old home. They say that the artist’s unfinished painting disappeared after her suicide, and that Clementina can’t rest until she gets it back. As with many other urban legends, you have to step back and wonder how anybody could have possibly known what happened here. Seeing as how Clementina died and all the other characters were sworn to secrecy, I suppose the follets themselves spread the story. Or it never happened. But come on, Catalan modernist architecture isn’t enough by itself to attract tourists!
Check out my book “Mexico’s Unsolved Mysteries: True Stories of Ghosts, Monsters, and UFOs from South of the Border” for more interesting mysteries of the Spanish-speaking world. You can buy the book on Kindle here.
July 5, 2017
The Kuykendall Family Phone “Hack”
In 2007, three families in Tacoma, Washington claimed to be the victims of a hacker who spied on them through their cellphones.
Today’s post is a guest article written by Carla.
In February 2007, three families, including the Kuykendall family, started receiving strange phone calls from an unknown source. It all started when Courtney Kuykendall’s phone started acting weird and sending text messages to her friends and family. It was odd, but didn’t seem too alarming at the time. The family chalked it up to interference or a glitch by the cell phone carrier.
Things took an alarming turn, however, when Courtney’s family received numerous threatening calls. These calls included death threats towards the lives of her family, pets and grandparents. Naturally concerned, the family alerted the authorities. The police listened to the calls and tried to determine where they were originating from.
It’s easy to think that this was a dark prank by someone with nothing better to do than to make threatening and harassing phone calls. When the trace came back, the phone calls seemed to originate from Courtney’s phone. Understandably, many people thought the whole situation was a hoax. But why would someone threaten his or her own family?
Even if it wasn’t Courtney, it could have been a simple case of Courtney’s phone data being intercepted, stolen and hacked. It’s possible that the online security of her phone was compromised, even on a home WiFi network. However, the creepy thing was, even after Courtney turned her phone off, the calls to her family kept coming.
It continued to escalate but now the phone calls and messages were also coming from other family members’ phones. These phones would also turn on all by themselves, and the ringtones and phone settings would consistently change.
In addition to threatening calls, the family started to suspect their everyday activities were being monitored through their phones. The mysterious caller would be able to identify the specific clothes they were wearing. They could also identify who was in the house and which family members were away.
The Kuykendalls took numerous security measures such as installing a home security system. Shortly after, they received a voice mail saying, “I know the security code.” They also turned off all the phones in the house. However, the mysterious caller was able to remotely power on the phones that had been turned off.
The police were involved numerous times. On one visit, they received a voice mail of the conversations of the house, including a recorded conversation with police.
You might be wondering why the Kuykendalls didn’t just replace the phones and change providers? They did so three times. Each time they would shortly receive a new message from the caller. The phone calls, messages and strange phone behavior continued every night for four months before it suddenly stopped. No one was ever caught.
Now it might have been some elaborate hoax created by the family; however, they weren’t the only ones. Two other families on the same street had similar stories. These families did know each other, but would all of them choose to make things up as a team? I don’t think so.
Phone companies insisted the stalking couldn’t be possible, while the local police were dumbfounded by the calls. They had no leads and had little idea how the caller could accomplish this. The police even investigated the family themselves. They had taken Courtney’s phone away from her, yet the calls continued.
So what could be a reasonable explanation? There is something called ‘spoofing’ which allows a hacker to manipulate or conceal the phone number when calling. It’s what may have enabled the caller to make the messages appear that they originated from Courtney’s phone.
Disturbingly enough, it is not that difficult to ‘spoof’ a phone. The only way to stop someone from doing this is to have up-to-date phone security software or use a VPN service to hide your IP Address. However, spoofing doesn’t allow someone to change the settings of the phone. To do this, the caller would have to have remotely hacked the phone. This is called ‘cloning’ and creates a virtual copy of the victim’s phone, giving the caller the same access to Courtney’s phone as she had.
But even spoofing and cloning a phone still wouldn’t allow someone to record conversations and turn the phone off. This would involve directly hacking the carrier to gain access to these conversations. Not an easy task! If this was a hack, it was highly elaborate for this to all happen in such a brief period. You must wonder why someone would want to do this to an every-day suburban family.
What do you think of these calls? Do you think it was an elaborate hoax by the families, or some malicious hacker? If it was a hacker, how do you think they did it? Tell us your thoughts in the comments section below.
Carla is a blogger for The Right Side of Truth and a self-confessed mystery buff. She grew up reading everything from Agatha Christie to Truman Capote. This, combined with a natural curiosity, has driven her to figure out the truth behind the bizarre and mysterious.
