Deleted Books

Two books have now been deleted from the online store and will no longer be available.

These are:

Strange & Mysterious Beasts

High Strangeness

These books were deleted due to no sales over the last eight months.  Other deletions are being considered.

Posts Removed

Posts on "What Landed At Gatton" as well as alleged Llandrillo and Berwyn Mts 'UFO' crashes have been removed from this blog.

Gatton by "request" while the other events all seem to be part of some long term skullduggery by British Ufological factions to hoax and perpetuate falsehoods.

Well...

Well, I checked to see the buyer for a few other copies of UFO Contact?

US Embassy, London

Hey, these people want to buy in bulk -no problem!

My Encounters With...The Men In Black!

I have never believed in the Men In Black who silence UFO witnesses and researchers. I do believe that, in the United States, some government agencies have been mistaken for MIB or were involved in sending out people to suppress information about experimental aircraft and so on that were observed.

In the late 1970s, circa 1979(?), I lived with my grandparents in Easton, Bristol. Nice people but it could get rough.  One dark, winter evening at around 21:00 hrs there was a slow knock on the front door (there were two doors in those old houses -one a light front door for day time use and the heavier outer door for night time).  There was something odd about the knock and I stopped my grandfather answering the door because he would not be able to deal with any young thugs.  He went into the kitchen to put the kettle on.

I opened the outer door to be confronted by two male figures in black motorcycle gear and the smoked helmet visors down. My hand was a few inches from a club I kept "just in case".  Neither spoke so I went first: "You knocked -what can I do for you -speak or the door closes".

Both moved forward as one and MIB 1 spoke: "You will cease all of your UFO research and destroy all your papers"  Now, I will have to censor my response which was: "What are you two ****-**** going to do if I don't?"  There was a slight movement as they seemed taken aback. MIB 2 then spoke: "If you do not there will be dire consequences for you and your family!"

That was a line they should not have crossed.

MIB 1 started to speak and raised his arm slightly.  As far as I was concerned two helmeted thugs had just threatened me and my family on the doorstep. No need for the club as both were quickly pacified. As I took the wallets from the jackets of the two men sprawled on the floor I pushed up their visors.  According to my grandfather he looked around the corner and saw me standing on the two men.  I recall he asked whether I wanted a cup of tea and went back into the kitchen. My gran...she saw the scene rolled her eyes and went back into the living room.

The two threatening MIB were from a Yorkshire based UFO group and after a little persuasion told me who had put them up to this charade (a well known British Ufologist who some people have been told the name of but I like to keep things low key). I got my polaroid camera (no mobile/phone cams back then)  and photographed the IDs and men and then kicked them out the front gate.

The same trick was tried on me later when I lived in Warmley outside Bristol: three men in black suits and ties, white shirts and sunglasses.  It was dark out but summer so my living room window next to the front door was open. The three MIB seemed shocked when they found themselves surrounded by four police officers -they had been talking with me about recent UFO sightings when my callers knocked.  Hearing the threats they went out the back door -one group to the left and the other the right.  There is an expression "Bricking it" (I prefer "messing their pants") which is what the MIB did. Or, rather, more Yorkshire (I think one was Staffordshire based) Ufologists did. After 30 minutes they were cautioned and on their way.

In the past, if I came across a report that I suspected might involve a military aircraft I simply asked "Should I lose that one?" or, on two occasions, I was contacted and told the UFO sightings I was looking into "were definitely NOT aliens!"  Cases dropped.

On one occasion in 1982 I was in a car with four other Ufologists when they panicked.  We were driving back from a quarry where UFOs had been seen by witnesses so were going down country roads. The driver noticed the black car with three men in it following us.  He took several diversions -the car was still following us. I told the driver to stop the car, despite their protestations I got out.  The other car pulled up and a window went down. A man with a very thick Birmingham accent asked if we were lost to?  They wanted the local market town but the high hedged fields meant that, in the dark, they could not see were they were.  They had seen us and thought we must be heading to a main road.

The other two occupants were his wife, with short cut hair and son son who was moaning non-stop about it being a dump. We got them back onto the main road safely.

On another late 1970s winter evening I was walking along Muller Road, with Eastville Park to our left -two other Ufologists were with me and they both thought the MIB threats -more hoaxing-rampant in the UK at that time were real. As we trudged along in the snow a car slowed down then picked up speed. It turned round further up the road and slowed as it passed us on the opposite side of the road. A few minutes later it was coming up behind us again. Car horns sounded as the car was slowing traffic down. Suddenly a dark object was thrown out from the rear of the car. It was round and clearly visible as it hit the ground a few feet in front of us. I hit the dirt -or, rather, snow. My two companions looked at me as though I had gone mental. They had not noticed the car passing three times and slowing down.  They had not seen the object thrown. It turned out to be a beer can.  They laughed and I pointed out that I doubted with their observational skills that they would see three MIB in front of them!

Slightly inebriated idiots having 'fun' while driving around.

UFOs reports have always been a good way to hide military testing or if something being tested crashes.  Trying to cover that type of thing up "the American way" just leads to mistrust and so much fantasy -Albert K. Bender of the International Flying Saucer Bureau probably had a breakdown when he encountered his 'MIB' but the British Flying Saucer Bureau (f.1952) quickly put its archives in a bank vault.  From then until the early 2000s they were "always waiting" for the MIB to turn up.

Ufologists and their pals arranging to have 'MIB' walk in to places where CCTV will conveniently film them, not to mention the sensationalist lies on trash TV from 'experts' does not help.

Ask why Science will not treat Ufology seriously.

By the way, did full UFO Disclosure destroy your life or cause people to panic?

Oh...that's right...Year 20+ and still the claims "It is happening this year....or next year.  Might be ten years from now. It's going to happen" Wake up.

Skinwalker Ranch. Just more Ufological Baloney -Update 26 08 2022

Four years later its nice to see people are agreeing with my original assessments. Hey, they even agree with me about the whole Lou Elizondo and "revellations" the public is being conned and the only question is "Why?"

We should not dismiss the idea that increased funding for defence  is not the reason. Or to hide technology being tested.

  If "The Truth is out there" then no one is telling us that truth.

 

Let me state at the very outset that when I saw George Knapp's presentation I sat up and paid attention. Here were people taking a scientific approach and doing what I have always said needed doing: pick a locale, put in what cameras and scientific instruments you can get and dig in.

I bought Knapp's book and some other book on the Skinwalker Ranch.  I prepared to have my mind blown and got a note pad ready because I was going to ask specific questions about footage and events.

A family arrive on a ranch and a gigantic hyena like creature strolls up and they casually let the kids pet it before it goes on to try to grab a calf and the father shoots the hyena-like beast but the bullet has no effect and the animal mopes off.

I re-read that again.

Then again.

My first thought was "bovine excrement".

It rang so false...I mean, you have kids and some calf-sized hyena-like creature walks out of the wilderness and up to your car do you say "Hey, go pet it, kids!" No. You get your kids in the vehicle and lock the doors and assess what you are dealing with.

But I skipped this.

I waited for the exciting revellations -back-up for what Knapp had talked about; the two scientists who saw the huge humanoid exit the light funnel....turns out only one saw this after he had gone off to "meditate".  So two scientists did NOT record anything on film while watching it -one did and it sounds like he was hysterical and not very cool-headed as you'd expect a scientist to be.  Just what was he "meditating" with?

Seriously; this is NOT how Knapp described the incident on podcasts and at his presentation. I think it fair to say that Knapp has more than a slight credibility problem.



Everything else that Knapp tells us and sounds almost impossible to explain falls to pieces. Well, there were the lights...but only something hardly visible that was not recorded clearly appeared.

It is worth emphasising that not one piece of real evidence, photograph or film footage has been released.

I think the man behind the money was being conned. Any good trickster can create a sulphurous or rotting egg smell.  Cattle vanishing mysteriously or cattle being sold on behind everybody's' back -or rustlers?   Even the incidents with cattle were not photographed and those things were big even to photograph in the specific places, etc. as described.

All of this weird stuff going on.  Oh, if only they would invent something that could be light-weight and carried about by someone -we could call it a "video camera"  or if only they would invent a phone you could carry about and that had an inbuilt camera/video camera. Damn.  When will Science catch up...wait: this things do exist but just not in the United States or to be more exact around Skinwalker Ranch.

The more I read the more the word "gullible" cropped up.  The 'mystery' starts and ends with the former property owners who continued on working the ranch. And guess who and their family are the main witnesses to the bizarre stuff?  What?  You guessed -how?

Well, it is so plain that even a police rookie would see it.

I would have LOVED for Skinwalker Ranch to be a genuine focal hot spot for phenomena.  I would have walked across the Atlantic to get there.

It turns out to be one more piece of ufological flim-flam that has since been taken over by the fantasists and hoaxers and those out to make money.  Every and any TV series from (hold in contempt) Ghost Adventures -try defending that piece of fantasy episode).  Oh, Jesse Ventura investigates....but so have, apparently, many dozens of others.

And what has come out of all of this -sadly, I watch a lot of videos on this stuff- malarkey ? Exactly what you might expect. Malarkey.

Once the fringe grabs on to a place or story it spins out of control.  Roswell, Aurora, Skinwalker Ranch -in the UK we had Warminster in the 1960s and there was any amount of dross talked and written about events there.

And now we have the movie that promises even more bunkum.  I am calling it out as I see it based on what I have read and seen: Skinwalker Ranch ios a set up hoax and con job.

A great pity.

There's no refund on Knapp's book. :-(

Somerset Historians -The Continuing Mystery of Whatever Happened To Phenix Adams?

"Whatever Happened To Phenix Adams?" is a question I still ask myself. If I get a whiff of a "mystery", as I write below, I stick with it until I find the solution. I don't think I have 40 years left to try to sort this one.

I did a lot of research and cannot find any evidence of "Phenis"  having been a forename used in the UK.  Phenix? Again, I cannot find that name in use so I definitely believe Phineas was the man's forename and the mistake comes about by either someone miss-hearing, miss-reading a note or even an apprentice messing up the printers block.

I will come back to this after a recounting of the case in question.

The one thing you find while trawling through newspaper archives are stories that have absolutely nothing to do with what you are looking for.  However, these stories pique your curiosity and they are little windows into the past that you would never normally get a chance to look through.

There are, of course, reports of murders, great cruelty to other humans but also -sadly- to animals simply because they are animals and what better way to have 'sport' and 'fun' than running down a badger or feeding hedgehogs poison to see whether it is true that none affect them.

Then you have cases like that of Phenix Adams.

Phenix Adams was a Private in the First Somerset Militia and, as you'll read below, sought medical aid for an ulcerated wound in the arm.  Help was denied and Phenix deserted but was caught but while in gaol another wound appeared on his leg.  All self inflicted or "occasioned by his own contrivance".  But then he fell down some stairs and blood poured from his ears.

After that, Adams slipped into a coma -at first the only conclusion the doctors could make was "fakery".  They tried all the tricks but it appears Adams was not faking. The last written about Adams was that  "The man now remains in the same state of mental insensibility."

That was it.  I can trace no more of Adams. Was he really causing problems by tampering with an old wound?  Then self-inflicting a new wound?  And the "fall" -did he pass out and you cannot really fake blood coming from your ears -a self inflicted cut in either ear wouldn't go unnoticed, especially if blood was "pouring out" and then the gradual slip into a coma -and it seems the doctors tried every trick to prove a hoax or medicate him.

First thing I thought was  hemorrhagic fever of some kind?  Without being able to find and read the notes of the doctors at the time we will never know.  Phenix Adams was declared a faker, deserter and genuine medical mystery all in one newspaper column.

The Taunton Courier for 1811 lists:

1811 18Jul Adams Phenis - private 1st Somerset Regiment wound

So, we're not even sure whether the name is "Phenis" or "Phenix"...here is the original item picked up and published by The  Liverpool Mercury, 16th August, 1811

Now,once I get the whiff of a puzzle or mystery I stick with it.  After all, I doubt I can afford 30-40 years to solve cases at my age!

So I dug and dug and then succeeded -don't ask how because one mention leads to nothing which then...you get the point? Somerset and Dorset Notes & QueriesVolume 12 - Page 339:

A Somerset Militia Man - From "The Times" of Saturday, Sept 14, 1811.

"Our readers will recollect a statement respecting a soldier of the First Somersetshire Militia, who had lain in a very surprising state of insensibility from the 26th of April, in the present year, down to the 18th of July. Various means had been resorted to for the purpose of ascertaining whether the illness was real, such as thrusting snuff up his nostrils, administering nitrous oxide gas, electrical shocks, powerful medicines, etc, all of which proved utterly unavailing in the attempt to arouse him from the unaccountable torpor in which he had laid so long ; nor, indeed, did any of these expediants produce in him the slightest symptoms of animation.

We have now to add to this account a few facts, which, for there singularity, may challenge competition with the most marvellous occurrence that ever reached the public notice.

A few days after our account appeared, Phineas ADAMS, the subject of this curious narrative, and whose age was no more than 'eighteen', on the 6th of June last, was removed from the goal in which he then was, to the parish of Bickenhall, a small village seven miles from Taunton. His parents residing at that place, but being unable to recieve him in there own habitation, Adams was lodged in the poor-house - a small cottage adjoining the churchyard. In this situation he continued to be without exhibiting the least evidence of an improving condition.

In this hopeless condition, he was visited by Mr. WELSH, surgeon of Taunton, who suggested the propriety of performing the operation of 'scalping' the patient, with a view to ascertain whether the fall, to which the illness was attributed, might not have produced a depression of the brain. The proposal was communicated to the parents of Adams, who expressed there willingness that the experiment should be made. Accordingly, at the time appointed, the surgeon accompanied Adams's father to the bedside of his son, and there, in the presence of several respectable persons, described to both the young man's parents the nature and precise course of operation about to be performed. The incisions were made, the scalp drawn up, and the head examined ; during all which time the young man manifested no audible sympton of pain, or sensibility of suffering whatever, until the application of an instrument, with which the head was scraped in a particular part, and then, and once only, he uttered a groan.

No beneficial result appearing from this experiment, and as his case seemed absolutely remediless, application was made to his regiment for his discharge.

On Tuesday, August 20, the discharge arrived, and was taken over to Bickenhall by the sergeant. On the Tuesday following, old Adams brought his son downstairs in his arms ; and on the 28th he again brought him down, the son still remaining insensible. Next night (the 29th) he was seen sitting in the poor-house, with a gun in his hand, conversing with his father ; and on Friday, the 30th (our readers will participate with us in the complete astonishment excited by the fact) he was at Mr PALMER's a farmer, two miles from Bickenhall, cutting spars, carrying reed up a ladder, and assisting his father in thatching a rick!

The extraordinary rapidity of this young man's recovery, after obtaining his discharge from his regiment, having excited, in combination with the other circumstances which we formerly stated, an opinion that imposition had been practised, some of the neighbours reported that a press-gang was coming for him. This, it is supposed, having reached his ears, he absconded, and not a syllable has been heard of him since. . . . " 

Was it possible -had Phineas Adams faked it all?  Eight days after the military discharge Phineas was still being carried downstairs by his father and was, supposedly, still insensible. What of the reed cutting and carrying?  Surely what the doctors were putting him through was worse than military life?

Whatever, this is a fascinating story and shows what I can get side-tracked with during a day. Damn but I can't ignore a mystery!

I hope Phineas Adams had a good life!

Really, this case is one that needs the expertise of a local historian -possibly one who can also check the militia rosters of the time if they still exist. It might be possible to learn more but after all this time it would still be guesswork as to the cause of Phineas' problems.  However, considering that doctors at that time, particularly in the military, were not exactly sensitive and gentle (there are cases where physicians  suspecting fakery were "very free" with sticking needles in patients -and needles in those days were much bigger).

Ah, for a time machine!

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Light Infantry uniform plate: British Light Infantry by Bryan Fosten from Osprey's Men-at-Arms No.119

So Why Are you Here?

It's interesting looking at the stats for views "Now" and seeing that, as always, the UK is 9th or 10th place (not surprising really).

I'd like to ask why you all visit the blog but I hate being ignored!  When you consider the actually daily stats and countries involved my original request for people to pass on links to news items on strange creatures or sightings from their countries should have received some response. But since 2011 -not one item forwarded.

Come on, people -we can do this!