Nick Redfern's Blog, page 135

The CFZ Yearbook: 2013

Jon Downes, of the Center for Fortean Zoology , has just published the latest edition of its annual title, The CFZ Yearbook .

As always, the 260-page book is packed with all manner of cryptozoological material. And here, from Jon, is a list of the contents:

More Cryptozoology: A listing of  certain animals unrecognised by science or of a paranormal nature by Ronan Coghlan
Snow Leopard: Spirit of the Mountains by Raheel Mughal
The man-eating plant of ye olde England by Glen Vaudrey
Possible sighting of unknown ape species, Tibet 2009 Jonathan Jacobs, plus in-depth analysis of the photograph
British Snake Catchers and Eccentrics by Richard Muirhead
The Amazing Animals of Pakistan by Raheel Mughal
The Mpisimbi: An undiscovered but now extinct King Cheetah strain in East Africa by Dr Karl Shuker
The ‘Lion’ Of Essex And Other British Big Cat Scares by Neil Arnold
Le Gevaudan: The Man behind the Monster by Paul Williams
2012: A Year in the Life of the Centre for Fortean Zoology: CFZ Australia 2012 Report by Rebecca Lang and Mike Williams
CFZ Canada 2012 by Robin Bellamy
Bigfoot Forums Annual Report
CFZ Annual Report by Jon Downes



It should be up on Amazon anytime now, and when it is, I'll let you know.

The OTHER alien autopsy films...

Remember the notorious alien autopsy film?

Well, what about the OTHER alien autopsy films?

They are the subject of my latest Mysterious Universe post, which you can find here, and which begins with the following, opening paragraphs...


"On May 5, 1995, a highly inflammatory piece of film-footage was shown to a select audience at the Museum of London, England, by a man named Ray Santilli. Thus was born the controversy surrounding the now-notorious Alien Autopsy film – a controversy that raged for more than a decade. On April 4, 2006, however, everything changed. Britain’s SKY Television show Eamonn Investigates revealed that the infamous Alien Autopsy film, that tantalized and intrigued so many for years, was not what it appeared to be.

"Ray Santilli told host Eamonn Holmes that he was responsible for the creation of the footage, along with colleague Gary Shoefield and special-effects expert John Humphreys, who worked on the British sci-fi show Dr. Who and on the fantasy movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Santilli continued to assert, however, that he did secure original footage from a still-unidentified cameraman which appeared to show a real alien autopsy, but which was in very poor condition. The result: what was presented to the world was 'restored footage.'"

Final Events and the Tuscon Weekly

The Tuscon Weekly has a new article at its website that, in part, references my Final Events book. You can find the post here , which deals with the UFO/entity-based experiences of a woman named Camille James Harman.

Abductions - Out of the Body

My latest Mysterious Universe article addresses a controversial aspect of alien abduction accounts. Hell, all the aspects are controversial, but for me, one stands out. It starts like this...

"One of the aspects of so-called 'alien abduction' experiences that fascinates me is the way in which some witnesses report their mind and visual-senses becoming detached from their physical body during the course of the encounter. Two cases, in particular, stand out. UFO researcher, good friend, and author Greg Bishop, says of one particularly relevant case from 1973: 'The main participant in that case was named Judy Doraty, and she had been driving back from a bingo game on May 23 of that year outside Houston, Texas, with her daughter, mother, sister, and brother-in-law.' Suddenly, everyone in the car witnessed 'a bright light in the sky' that seemed to be pacing them.

"'On their return home,' Greg continues, 'the light was still with them and, ominously, moved in closer. The family, as well as a group who came running out of the Doraty house, was shocked to see a huge disk-shaped object with rows of windows float silently over the property and across an adjacent field. It soon shot off straight up into the sky, going from ‘very, very big to very, very little in a matter of seconds,’ Doraty recalled.'"

Manufacturing a Monster

When is a monster not a monster? When it's a manufactured one.

That's the theme of my latest Mysterious Universe article , which kicks off like this...

"In his classic book Explore Phantom Black Dogs, author and researcher Bob Trubshaw wrote the following words: 'The folklore of phantom black dogs is known throughout the British Isles. From the Black Shuck of East Anglia to the Mauthe Dhoog of the Isle of Man there are tales of huge spectral hounds ‘darker than the night sky’ with eyes ‘glowing red as burning coals.’ The phantom black dog of British and Irish folklore, which often forewarns of death, is part of a world-wide belief that dogs are sensitive to spirits and the approach of death, and keep watch over the dead and dying.'

"Having investigated many such cases across the UK, I can say for sure there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that there is a very real – and undeniably paranormal-based – phantom black hound in the UK. Indeed, it’s one that has been able to call the old land its very own for centuries. And although reports of the beast are nowhere near as prevalent as they were in the Middle Ages, they still surface from time to time."

From King Richard III to Bigfoot

Yes, you did read the heading of this post correct!

So, what's it all about? Well, it's the focus of a new article from Andrew May, which can be found at his Andrew May's Forteana Blog .

It starts like this:

"Last month saw not one but two major news stories revolving around the subject of DNA analysis. In America, there was the long-awaited publication of the Bigfoot DNA results, first announced in a press release in November last year. In Britain, there was the just as eagerly anticipated announcement that the remains unearthed in Leicester last September are indeed those of King Richard III, who was killed at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485.

"At first sight, the latter might appear to fall squarely in the domain of mainstream academia, but this isn’t the case at all. The discovery of Richard III’s remains was as much a product of 'Outsider Science' as the Bigfoot DNA study."

And here's Andrew's complete post...

Searching for Monsters

  There's a new Lair of the Beasts post from me at Mania.com, which begins as follows: "Last week, here at Lair of the Beasts , my subject-matter was the top three expeditions I’d like to go on in search of strange and enigmatic creatures. My choices were to search for (a) the massive, presumed-extinct, Australian monitor lizard called Megalania that might not be so extinct, after all; (b) Morag, the lake-monster of Scotland’s Loch Morar; and (c) the Chinese equivalent of Bigfoot, which is known as the Yeren. It was an article that prompted one reader to email me: 'What are the top three, favorite expeditions that you’ve already been on?' Well, that’s a very good question. And it’s one that I can answer easily."  And here's those three...

Mothman Hits Africa

There's a new novel on the subject of Mothman available as of yesterday. Its title: U'buntu: Mothman of Africa . The author: Don Tynan.

About the book we're told:

"As the title suggests, the story is set primarily in Africa. After the indescribably brutal slaying of a farmer’s family he takes his own life. His mournful wails incite Mothman to exact revenge on the butchers. The African Philosophy of U’buntu suggests that not only should the perpetrators of crimes suffer punishment, but also the greater society in which they live. Following this idea U’buntu locates the murderers who have fled to a nearby shantytown..."

If you're someone who just has to buy everything of a Mothman nature, you know what to do:  click on the link!

Highway to Hell

There's another new post from me at Mysterious Universe , this one on what is probably the most controversial book I have ever written: Final Events .

It starts like this:

"In early 2007, I conducted a series of extensive interviews with Ray Boeche, an Anglican priest and a former MUFON state director for Nebraska. The subject was Ray’s 1991-onwards contact with a pair of US Department of Defense physicists that were working on a classified program to contact what they termed Non-Human Entities, or NHE’s. Many within the field of Ufology might call them aliens or ETs. The group that Ray’s informants were working for defined them as something else, something very different, and something deeply controversial and ominous: demons .

"It was thanks to Ray’s revelations, in a roundabout way, that I was put on the trail of the so-called Collins Elite, whose activities I detailed in my Final Events book. The CE was (and, possibly, still is) a quasi-official think-tank-type group in government that believes the UFO phenomenon does not originate within the heart of some far away star system, but in the pits of Hell."

And here's the entire, hellish tale...

PS: I couldn't resist giving AC/DC credit in the above-title of this blog-post...

August Derleth: Fact or Fiction?

There's another new post from me up at Mysterious Universe , which deals with a controversial character and an equally controversial book. It starts like this...

"We all have our favorite books that we can (and do!) read over and over again. I can certainly name several: Jack Kerouac’s Big Sur; Hunter S. Thompson’s The Rum Diary; Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles; and Keith Waterhouse’s Billy Liar.

"And then there’s The Lurker at the Threshold , a big favorite of mine, which was widely credited to acclaimed horror writers H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth. First published in the 1940s by Carroll & Graf, the book was, in reality, almost solely the work of Derleth, with barely a couple of thousand (if even that) of its approximately 50,000 words having been contributed by Lovecraft.



"The Lurker at the Threshold is a most intriguing book, to say the least. Although presented to the reader strictly as an entertaining work of fiction, it deals with certain issues that are central to many topics that crop up in the real world of Forteana, and with which I have crossed paths, time and again, during the course of my studies and writings of the paranormal kind."

And here's the rest of the post on this very curious saga...