Several fiery objects in a variety of colors were flying erratically above the fields on either side of the road. Two of the objects joined together in the sky and became one. Another shot straight up and disappeared. The other one, they said, took on the appearance of a glowing human figure standing beside the road. At the intersection of Deschutes and Dersch roads the lights disappeared completely.
Terrified by their ordeal, the carload of teenagers sped to Darrell’s house where they told their incredible story to Darrell’s father, Mr. Dean Rich. The elder Rich was admittedly skeptical at first, even though the look in the boy’s eyes eliminated all possibility of insincerity. All skepticism quickly fled, however, when he returned with the boys to the Battle Creek Bridge area and walked out into the darkness of a nearby walnut orchard.
There was a sudden commotion in the darkened trees, followed by an unearthly howl that sent shivers down everyone’s spines. Rich later said of it, “It sounded like a real deep growl. It was a real weird type of sensation. It was something I’ve never experienced before.” Then, for the second time that night, everyone ran. Only now there were five runners instead of four. The unnerving growling continued as they reached the car where everyone agreed that, whatever it was, it wanted them to leave. And they were once again happy to comply.
The car-load of shaken witnesses drove straight to the Anderson County Police Station where they, for the second time that night, told their incredible stories. The police searched the area soon afterwards but, as might be expected, found nothing. However, the officers doubted that the incident was a hoax. One officer commented that the group seemed completely sincere and that they were ‘really scared.’
Darrell Rich later pondered; “I wonder if we saw something we shouldn’t have.” Indeed, I think not: it seems that these entities went out of their way to show themselves to the group of youngsters. Perhaps they saw exactly what they were supposed to see. It is also an interesting observation that the bizarre creature, whatever it was, ran away from the teenagers, but took a more aggressive attitude toward the approaching adult.
One morning in 1973, a Russell County, Kentucky woman reportedly observed two three-foot-tall, reddish-skinned inhumanoids near her house in Russell Springs. The entities were seen walking around the carport near the side of her house and entering a small ‘washtub-shaped’ craft sitting on the ground near the back yard. The strange looking vehicle then rose over the top of the house and ‘disappeared.’ According to the Russell Springs Times Journal, October 24th , 1973, the little men resembled small humans, aside from their red skin, but walked in a peculiar manner, as if on tiptoes. The ground was reportedly disturbed where the craft had been sitting.
A family living in a trailer four miles north of Tabor City, North Carolina claimed to have had a number of sightings of two “space creatures” back in late September of 1973. One witness, Rose Williamson, said, “They are about seven or eight feet tall with big red eyes that glow in the dark. They are dressed in brown shirts with black pants which are ragged at the bottom.” She had seen one of these creatures, she claimed, as it scrawled a cryptic message in the dirt. After they had gone, she walked over and examined the ground and found the words; “Help no” written there. She thought the second word might have been incomplete.
On October 24th, 1973, after receiving a number of UFO reports, Deputy Sheriff Ed Townsend joined forces with a local tow-truck driver named Gary Flatter to search the area for “children walking along the road dressed like spacemen.” At one point, as Townsend was driving along outside of town, something peculiar happened.
“In one place we heard and felt this pulsating, electric feeling,” he said. “We could only get within a couple hundred feet of the place.” Frustrated, he drove back to town. A few moments later Flatter approached the same location and saw what he called “silvery midgets” with tiny hands and feet. “They were standing about 50 feet on the northern side of the fence and just looking at me,” Flatter reported. “I turned my spotlight on them and the reflection was very bright, something between a reflection from a mirror and a piece of galvanized steel. They had masks on and a tube running to their chests. Their feet were about three-by-six inches and their hands were just stubs, no fingers that I could see.”
Flatter shined his light on them, he said, and the things turned away from it, but not like humans would. “They just kind of turned all at once,” he said, “just sort of swiveled, feet and everything. I watched them for about thirty seconds; then they sort of moved and wriggled their feet and they came up off the ground, and were gone.” Flatter returned to the location the next day with Sheriff Townsend, where they allegedly found tiny footprints with “large, square heels and no toes.”
Another extremely bizarre incident happened in Puerto Rico one Spring evening in 1975. The female witness, after being alerted by the sound of her dogs barking furiously in her back yard, rushed outside to see a dark, ape-like figure perched at the top of a nearby palm tree. The figure seemed to shrink right before her eyes, she said, until it got smaller and smaller and then transformed into a bright sphere of light and shot off into the night.
On the evening of January 1st, 2004, three men were out celebrating the New Year in Ivanovo, Russia when they were startled by the approach of an orange-colored UFO. They were even more startled when they observed a strange, long-snouted inhumanoid figure standing near some trees just a few meters away. The peculiar figure seemed to be mocking the men and, as it turned sideways, they saw that, from this angle the entity appeared to be completely flat. One of the men was then allegedly “zapped” by a strange wave from the aerial object, then the monster just vanished right before his eyes; as they often do.
So, what game are these ‘space creatures’ playing here with us? Are they benevolent to humans, or is their appearance harmful to us? The answer can be found in the variety of ailments.
Many UFO witnesses subsequently endure, both psychologically and physically. Reported infirmities include the swelling and burning of the eyes, unexplained rashes, radiation burns, insomnia and night terrors. Some become violently ill for days, weeks, months, or years. Some even die.
John Keel writes in his 1976 book, ‘Why UFOs?’ of the dangers of seeing a flying saucer. On July 4th, 1969 one Arcesio Bermudez of Anolaima, Columbia observed a luminous object as it casually maneuvered at low altitude over a nearby farm field. Accompanied by several other witnesses, he then attempted to signal to the craft with a flashlight. Investigators for the Aerial Phenomenon Research Organization (APRO) conducted a detailed investigation of the case and published their unsettling findings in the July-August 1969 issue of the APRO Bulletin:
“Within two days of the observation, the principle witness, Mr. Arcesio Bermudez, was taken very ill; his temperature dropped to 95 degrees F, and he had a “cold touch,” although he claimed that he did not feel cold. Within a few more days his condition became far more serious; he had “black vomit” and diarrhea with blood flow. He was taken to Bogota and attended by dr. Louis Borta at 10 a.m. on July 12, and later by Dr. Cesar Esmerel at 7:30 p.m. At 11:45 p.m., Mr. Bermudez died.”
Part Seven:
The Inexplicables
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.”
-Albert Einstein
Some of the more bizarre inhumanoid entities that are sometimes seen by human beings also seem to defy all attempts at categorization. They are neither giant nor diminutive. They don’t fly or swim and do not appear in the company of ‘flying saucers.’ They seem to be in a class all by themselves, so to speak.
The Skeletoids
According to court records of the time cited by John Keel in ‘The Complete Guide to Mysterious Beings’ (1994), an uninvited guest made an appearance at the wedding dance of King Alexander of Scotland in the year 1293. He was not properly attired for the party, and to say that the congregation was shocked at his appearance would be a gr
oss understatement indeed.
The entity was entirely naked but worse still, he had also neglected to wear his flesh, showing up in nothing but his bare bones. As one might imagine, the frightening skeletal figure put quite a damper on the festivities. Unfortunately, for us at least; although there were three Kings Alexander of Scotland, none was on the throne during the year 1293 (nine years after Alexander III died) This is presumably either a typo or a mistake on Keel’s part. In any case, no word is made of any injuries the witnesses may have suffered, but not so this next incident.
It took place at Croglin Hall in Cumberland, England in 1875. One summer evening, as Miss Amelia Cranswall lay awake in bed, a horrible skeleton-like figure broke open her window and barged right into her boudoir. Hearing her terrible screams, her two brothers, Michael and Edward, broke down the locked door to reach her. They found her lying unconscious in a pool of blood, bleeding from wounds on her neck and shoulders. Looking out the window they saw the bony figure running across the lawn. They pursued it but it got away. Other women of the neighborhood reportedly suffered similar attacks by a grisly, skeletal apparition.
A similar skeletal specter was witnessed twenty-eight years previously by artist William Holman Hunt and the station master of Ewell East Station in Surrey, England. The two had come face to face with the menacing ghoul, said to have a skeletal face with a white cloth and hood draped about its luminous body.
Over in Ireland a gaunt, spindly figure known as the ‘Yellow Phantom’ is said to wander sea-shores. It was rumored that to look into the being’s huge, cavernous eyes meant instant death. The yellow-skinned apparition was allegedly seen by a twelve-year-old girl at Cork Harbor in 1912. It was simply standing there by the sea wall, she said, staring out across the water.
Another Skeletoid entity was allegedly encountered several times in the deserts of New Mexico between the Superstition Mountains and Seventeen Palms area of Arizona. Author, Fortean and friend, Neil Arnold writes about the Borrego Phantom in his monumental work, ‘Monster! The A-Z of Zooform Phenomena.’
“One dark night, so they say, a few years ago, a prospector by the name of Charley Arizona, was settling down for the night on remote land four miles southeast of Borrego. During the early hours, he was suddenly awoken by a disturbance in the surrounding darkness. He went to investigate, thinking someone had intruded upon his campsite. However, in the distance he could make out the faint glow of something, possibly a torch, and he thought that maybe someone had been lost in the mountains, and found his camp. As the light approached Charley could see a figure, and as it got closer the sight traumatized him.
What he saw was a tall, thin, skeletal figure stumbling across the track, and from its ribcage a light shown, like that of a lantern, casting a dim glow in the still night. The skeleton must have been over eight feet in height, and it passed right on by, disappearing behind some rocks, as Charley remained transfixed by its eerie presence.
A couple years later, two more prospectors in the area caught a glimpse of the mysterious and eerie figure whilst they were camping. One of the men claimed that he had first seen the dim light in the blackness, and had then been approached by a spindly skeleton, but the other witness dismissed the story, claiming that all he’d seen was the glow of their fire reflecting on the rocks. However, a year after the incident, a man traveling through the mountains also encountered the borrego apparition, and he described the same wandering figure stumbling across the desert with a glow in its bony structure. He reported the encounter at Vallecito Station, where rumors spread like wildfire, and the legend was born.
Intrepid enthusiasts would take to the Superstition Mountains in the hope of catching a glimpse of the eerie glow which was said to signify the arrival of the spook in the locality. One search party believed they encountered the ghastly being one evening when they set up a nightly vigil in the vicinity. One of the men in the small group of hunters fired a shot at the thing, but to no avail as it passed on by, awkwardly stumbling and tripping across the desert like a drunken ghost. A few of the other men attempted to follow the figure, but eventually lost it in a valley...”
A similar ghastly spectre was seen in Richmond, Virginia in 1925 after the train tunnel collapsed at Church Hill killing many. The sinister figure was reportedly seen to emerge from the debris of the tunnel, dripping blood from its jaws, and flesh from his limbs. Several versions of the tale exist and many feel that the figure was simply an injured victim of the collapse, bleeding and in shock. This seems unlikely as, if he was simply a victim of the tragedy, he would’ve been seen and administered to by some of the people who must have rushed to the scene to offer aid.
When considering the Skeletoid entities, another incident springs to mind which happened in Ojai, California back in the 1950s. Terrified witnesses had reported sightings of a hideous inhumanoid creature near Creek Road Bridge, just south of Ojai. The monster looked like a horribly burned man, witnesses claimed, with strips of burnt flesh hanging from his exposed skull. “Charman,” as the horrible entity came to be called, was seen by several witnesses and came to be considered a local specter before he disappeared from the area completely. Charman, it seemed, perhaps feeling a bit overexposed, carried no light with him as did the Borrego spectre, but a similar figure from European folklore did.
“Clutchbone” was said to be a tall, gaunt phantom with black, leathery skin and a light burning from his forehead. Such a being allegedly terrorized remote locations in Finland and Sweden back in the late 1800s and was said to dismember its victims. Another folkloric entity of similar description is the ‘Kali’ of Indian legend. This horrifying, vampiric specter is said to have black, charred skin, blood red eyes and a long tongue. The ‘Malawato’ from the folklore of the Solomon Islands is also said to be a skeletal figure that haunts the woodlands.
“My first ghostly encounter (that) I can remember was when I was about six or seven years old. My mom, her boyfriend, my sister and me had just moved into a house in Pleasantville, New Jersey. In the room (where) me and my sister slept, there was an attic door. I felt very uneasy living in the house and especially uneasy sleeping in that room with the creepy attic.
“I dozed off to sleep around three or four in the morning. I awoke and saw the attic door was open. I tried to wake my sister, who was sleeping beside me in the same bed, to get up and close the door, but she would not move at all. All of a sudden, I saw something move in the corner of my eye. The movement came from the left side of my vision, about four or five feet from the bed. It was very dark in the room, but the moon shone through the window and provided a little light.
At first I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me because of what I saw. I wiped my eyes, blinked and pinched my arm to make sure I wasn’t still asleep. What I saw almost made me pee on myself. Looking directly at me through empty eye-sockets was a skeleton. It had on a black cape and the inside (of the cape) was blood red. I know how this sounds, but it is very true. I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t move. I was in shock and scared out of my mind. I closed my eyes and hid my head under the covers.
When I looked up again it was still there, which really made me believe I wasn’t dreaming. Finally, I mustered up enough strength and ran out of the room, leaving my sister and the ghostly figure (whatever it was) behind. I ran to my mom and told her what had happened. Of course, she didn’t believe me, but stayed with me until I fell asleep. To this day, I don’t know what it was…” -anonymous witness, 2008.
On January 21st, 1879, at ten p.m., a man driving his horse-drawn cart home from Woodcote to Ranton in Staffordshire, England got the shock of his life when suddenly, out of the darkness of some nearby woods ran a black creature with glowing eyes and leapt straight onto his horses back. Frightened; and rightfully so, the horse bucked and bolted, unable to dislodge the assailant and took off down the lane at breakneck speed.
The driver raised his whip and lashed at the entity several times but incredibly, the whip went straight through the cr
eature as if it were a phantom. As the horse continued to build speed, the creature simply vanished. Luckily the driver was able to regain control and no one was
injured though both the driver and the horse were undoubtedly left in a state of shock and bewilderment. Merry old England has played host to many nightmarish entities over the years, including one which was seen by multiple witnesses nearly a century later. During the 1960s and 70s London’s Highgate Cemetery was the scene of a series of encounters with a creature that came to be called the “Highgate Vampire.” Said to stand over seven feet tall with red, glowing eyes, wear jet-black clothing and glide, not walk, about the crumbling crypts and tombstones.
The Highgate Vampire was held responsible for several psychic attacks on passers-by and a number of dead animals found in the area. It had appeared to a number of witnesses, floating down a darkened path behind the gate. Those unfortunate enough to encounter the vampire described a choking feeling during the incidents. Some spoke of meetings with a horrifying, cold, malignant apparition which allegedly threw them violently to the ground, leaving them frightened and disoriented.
Highgate Cemetery, like a scene straight out of an old Hammer Dracula film; it is a dank, decaying palace of the dead with a winding labyrinth of crumbling crypts and ivy-laden grave markers. It has long been rumored to be the favored haunt of local Satanists and practitioners of black magic and many occult rituals have allegedly taken place there.
Across the Atlantic, more oddball entities were observed in Lisbon, Ohio in 1930. A young man, while walking to a local swimming hole, was alleged to have seen several ghostly-white, faceless creatures as they scrambled around on the path in front of him, and they didn’t seem to take any notice of his approach. Unsettled, the man exited the area. He later claimed that the entities bore a strong resemblance to the ‘Shmoos’ in the ‘Lil Abner’ comic strips, which answers the age-old question at last: life really does imitate art and not the other way around.
The Inhumanoids Page 33