Nick Redfern's Blog, page 129

Peter Cushing - 100!

As someone who grew up watching all those old, excellent Hammer horror films of the late 1950s and 1960s, I couldn't let it pass that Peter Cushing - who starred in so many of them - was born 100 years ago today!

Unleashing Monster Files...

This week marks the official release of my new book: Monster Files: A Look Inside Government Secrets and Classified Documents on Bizarre Creatures and Extraordinary Animals! Published by New Page Books, Monster Files takes a long and winding trip into dark and foreboding territory. It is territory where the strange and the monstrous dwell. It’s a place filled with bizarre creatures, nightmarish beasts, and terrible things of the woods, skies, and oceans. And it’s filled with something else, too: (a) agents and employees of government; and (b) secret files filled with astounding tales of creatures of types that should not exist, but which just might.

For absolutely decades, rumors, tales and legends have surfaced to the effect that government agencies – all around the world and since at least the early to mid 1800s onwards – have been secretly collecting and carefully studying data on bizarre beasts, extraordinary animals, and strange creatures.

And here's where you can find more...

An Alien Big Cat in Alien-Filled Woods

"Imagine the scene: It’s late on a chilled, winter’s night and the witching-hour is looming perilously close. Your high-pressure job takes you out of town on a regular basis, and right now – after a hard week spent on the road – you just want to get home to your wife and the comfort of your own bed. But before you can do both, you are forced to concentrate on driving through the winding, tree-shrouded roads of large, ancient woodland. Your eyes are tired, the light is poor, and mysterious shadows dominate your field of view. And, little do you know it, but there’s something else on the road, too. It’s something terribly monstrous, as you are just about to find out.

"As you negotiate a sharp bend – a bend you have traveled on probably hundreds of occasions and one which is particularly dense with tree cover – you slow down and turn on your high beams to help illuminate the blackness that beckons. Suddenly, your eyes become hypnotized by something incredible on the right-side of the road."

The above is how my latest Mysterious Universe post begins, on a saga of an out-of-place animal and an infamous forest.

An Ancient Horseman

My latest Lair of the Beasts article at Mania.com is on a case that is one of my favorites: a decades-old story from the heart of the English countryside. A time-slip? A ghost? Or something else entirely? We'll likely never know!

Bizarre Beasts and Paranormal Places

Back online after an apartment move (but the unpacking never ends, of course!), which means it's time to get back to it.

My latest Mysterious Universe article focuses on the strange connection between certain cryptozoological beasts and places known for being, in simple terms, strange...

Crop Circles and Government Secrets

Well, there's one last post from me before I get down to packing, moving, and then unpacking in the new apartment: it's on the strange subject of British Intelligence, the Second World War, and Crop Circles.

You can find it right here.

And, I'll be back here sometime next week!

On the Move

There probably won't be many posts from me for the rest of this week, as I'm on the move to a new apartment this weekend. But business will be back to normal next week!

UFOs & OBEs

My latest Mysterious Universe article deals with an intriguing topic: the links between Out-of-Body Experiences (OBEs) and UFOs. It starts like this...

"One of the most notable UFO encounters ever recorded occurred shortly after 11p.m. on October 18, 1973. That the prime witnesses were serving members of the U.S. Army Reserve only added to the credibility of the report. Having departed from Port Columbus, Ohio, their UH-1H helicopter was headed for its home base at Cleveland Hopkins Airport. Aboard were Captain Lawrence J. Coyne; Sergeant John Healey, the flight-medic; First Lieutenant Arrigo Jezzi, a chemical engineer; and a computer technician, Sergeant Robert Yanacsek. All seemed normal as the crew climbed into the air and kept the helicopter at a steady 2,500 feet altitude."

Monster Files: New Reviews

 There are several new reviews online of my just-released book, Monster Files: A Look Inside Government Secrets and Classified Documents on Bizarre Creatures and Extraordinary Animals .

The first is at Horror News , which you can find at this link.  About the book, HN say in part: "Bestselling author Nick Redfern’s many books are always amazing and dependably controversial. His latest is Monster Files...an exposé that rips open hidden government files filled with evidence of strange animals whose existence has not been proven (until now)."

And then there's a review at Blog Critics . It notes: " Monster Files:  A Look Inside Government Secrets and Classified Documents On Bizarre Creatures and Extraordinary Animals by Nick Redfern is an interesting story about a collection of fantastic sightings of bizarre creatures over the centuries. Redfern includes full length pictures of half-apes, the lagoon creature, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, winged beasts and creatures appearing to be real werewolves."

And here's an extract from a third review , at the Occult Detective site: "With his trademark attention to detail and fervent zeal for Fortean journalism, Redfern delivers another stellar addition to the annals of the Weird. Monster Files is an excellent primer for budding cryptozoologists and conspiracy buffs as it delves not only into a myriad of fantastic, legendary beasties and grumpkins, but also into the various government agencies who just might be more knowledgeable about such things than they’re willing to let on."

Flying Triangles: Not New Phenomena

My latest Mysterious Universe article focuses on one of the biggest controversies within Ufology: the so-called Flying Triangles. Are they classified military craft or vehicles from somewhere else?

Many ufologists who suggest the FTs are ours maintain that's because they have only been seen for the last few decades - chiefly the 1980s onwards. But they're talking crap. If you go looking, you find numerous reports of FTs - identical to those seen today - dating back forty to fifty years ago.

And my new MU post focuses on one, perfect example. It starts like this:

"As many students of Ufology will be aware, the last couple of decades or so have seen a rise in reports of one particular type of UFO. It has become known as the Flying Triangle . The FTs are triangular in shape and very often black in color, hence the name, of course! They often emit a low humming noise, and have a trio of lights on their underside. They usually have rounded corners too, rather than sharply angled edges. And, in some ways, they are not unlike the Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit (otherwise known as the Stealth Bomber) in design. This has, quite naturally, given rise to the possibility that the FTs are next-generation Stealth planes, rather than true UFOs. It’s not an unreasonable assumption. But there’s a problem with that scenario: the FTs are actually not new, or even recent, at all.

"While digging through a whole host of formerly classified files on UFOs at the National Archives at Kew , England in 1996, I came across a one-page report dated 28 March 1965 that, I confess, I almost overlooked. On closer inspection, however, I realized that it was potentially one of the most important UFO-related documents that I had ever come across. According to the MoD paperwork, on the night in question a witness saw at approximately 9.30 p.m. over moor-land near Richmond, North Yorkshire, England:'Nine or ten objects – in close triangular formation each about 100ft long – orange illumination below – each triangular in shape with rounded corners, making low humming noise.'"

Here's the rest of the article which demonstrates that - regardless of what many might think - the Flying Triangle aspect of the UFO controversy is far from being a relatively recent one.