Nick Redfern's Blog, page 142

Peggy Cummins, Happy Birthday!

Well, I missed it by 24-hours, but it's still not too late to wish Peggy Cummins a happy 87th birthday .

In case you didn't know, she's the last surviving member of the cast of my all-time favourite film, Night of the Demon .

Here's wishing you many more to come, Miss Cummins!

The film stars Dana Andrews in the lead role of Dr. John Holden, but it's Niall MacGinnis - as the Aleister Crowley-like Julian Carswell - who masterfully steals the show.

Packed with strange and spooky goings-on in the woods, monstrous demons, glowing balls of light traveling through darkened trees, supernatural big cats, witchcraft, and some memorably sinister characters, Night of the Demon has a curiously Fortean element to it.

If your idea of a horror film is just seeing a bunch of bland college kids getting hacked to pieces one-by-one by some character in a mask and amid a mass of modern-day special effects, then this most definitely isn't a film for you.

However, if (like me) you are a devotee of atmospheric, black-and-white horror films from decades-past, then  Night of the Demon is one you will definitely want to catch.

If you've never seen it before, you are in for a treat!

PS: It was released in the US as Curse of the Demon (with several key scenes omitted), so don't get confused...

Dowsing and the Government

My latest Mysterious Universe post is on a subject that rarely gets addressed, namely official, secret interest in the art of dowsing.

It begins like this...

"One of the strangest skills and talents allegedly possessed by humans is water-divining, or dowsing as it is more popularly known. Although the ability of the dowser to locate water by non-conventional means is looked on with suspicion and skepticism in some quarters, for many it is an age-old tradition that remains as absolutely relevant and vital today as it was centuries ago.

"Not only that: the skill has attracted the secret attention of some quite unlikely parties, including the US Intelligence community, the government of the former Soviet Union, Adolf Hitler, the British Police Force, and a department of the British Government that played a key role in the battle against the Nazis during the Second World War."

It's (not) the end of the world as we know it!

Good friend Kithra reminds us that, in case we forgot (as I actually had!), the world goes to crap this coming Friday. According to a bunch of long-gone people, of course.

Her post begins like this...

"This Friday is 21st December, the end of the Mayan Calendar, and doom and disaster is rife across the Internet with so many people under the misapprehension that it will also be the end of the world. It won’t be, it’s just the end of one cycle and the start of another. Although it would be wonderful if the new cycle ushered in an age that was globally more spiritual, and more compassionate.

"If it were to be the end how would that play out around the world on the exact date? Writing as somebody located in the UK how would that date apply to other places, such as Australia, or Japan? For them would it happen on Saturday instead?"

Good questions! You can find Kithra's complete article right here.

PS: Don't worry, the world will NOT end this week! Christmas WILL come!

Monster Diary Gets Loren's Vote

Loren Coleman votes my Monster Diary book as the "best autobiographical cryptozoological book of the year."

And here's the link where you can find Loren's top books in a wide range of other crypto-themed categories.

That's me and Loren above, photographed in October of this year.

Wildmen of Europe

Dr. Karl Shuker has a new post at his Shuker Nature blog.

The subject: the European wildman.

Karl begins...

"Homo sapiens was not the only species of human named and recognised by Linnaeus when publishing Systema Naturae, his revolutionary binomial system of zoological classification, in 1735. Among several others was Homo ferus, the wild man, which according to Linnaeus was covered in hair, moved on all fours, was mute, and lived apart from H. sapiens in forests, hills, and mountains. Today, none of Linnaeus’s ‘other’ species of human is recognised by mainstream science."

They may not be recognized, but that doesn't mean the subject has no validity to it!

In Search of Britain's Big Cats

My latest Lair of the Beasts column at Mania.com, on Britain's Big Cats, which begins like this...

"For decades, people all across the United Kingdom - from the cold northern realms of Scotland to the southern-most borders of England – have reported sightings of large cats, very often the size of mountain-lions and equally often completely black in color.  "Their many and varied colorful and memorable names include the Beast of Bodmin, the Essex Lion, the Surrey Puma, and the Beast of Exmoor. "Needless to say, no-one should be seeing any such creatures – anywhere at all – in the wilds of the UK. And yet people do see them, on no less than dozens and dozens of occasions each and every year. So, since Britain has no large, indigenous cats in its midst at all, this begs a very important and big question: where are the cats coming from? Let’s see…"   

MIB, WIB, Monster

There's a new article from me at Mysterious Universe that focuses on one of the strangest stories to have come my way while searching for the Chupacabras on Puerto Rico.

Although I have now made a number of trips to the island, and uncovered a lot of weird tales, this one (told to me and Paul Kimball of Red Star Films in 2005) is very odd.

It starts like this:

"While the term 'Men in Black' is one that pretty much everyone understands – regardless of whether or not they have an interest in the UFO issue, conspiracy-theories, or Forteana in general – what about their female counterparts, the Women in Black, or WIB? Although reports are far more scarce, they do exist and are no less intriguing than the more well-known MIB. Indeed, back in 2005, I was caught up in the investigation of one such case…



"For years, sensational and sinister stories have surfaced from the forests and lowlands of Puerto Rico that tell of a strange and lethal creature roaming the landscape by night and day, while striking overwhelming terror into the hearts of the populace – which is not at all surprising since the animal has been described as having a pair of glowing red eyes, powerful, claw style hands, razor sharp teeth, a body not unlike that a monkey, a row of vicious spikes running down the length of its back, and occasionally, and of deep relevance to this particular chapter, a pair of large and leathery bat-like wings."

And here's the complete feature.