Monsters and Myths

Halloween’s origins date back more than 2,000 years. On what we consider November 1, Europe’s Celtic peoples celebrated their New Year’s Day, called Samhain (SAH-win).

The night before Samhain—what we know as Halloween—spirits were thought to walk the Earth as they traveled to the afterlife. Fairies, demons, and other creatures were also said to be abroad.

Celtic Costumes

In addition to sacrificing animals to the gods and gathering around bonfires, Celts often wore costumes—probably animal skins—to confuse spirits, perhaps to avoid being possessed, according to the American Folklife Center at the U.S. Library of Congress.

By wearing masks or blackening their faces, Celts are also thought to have impersonated dead ancestors.

Young men may have dressed as women and vice versa, marking a temporary breakdown of normal social divisions.

In an early form of trick-or-treating, Celts costumed as spirits are believed to have gone from house to house engaging in silly acts in exchange for food and drink—a practice inspired perhaps by an earlier custom of leaving food and drink outdoors as offerings to supernatural beings.

Christian Influence

Samhain was later transformed as Christian leaders co-opted pagan holidays. In the seventh century Pope Boniface IV decreed November 1 All Saints’ Day, or All Hallows’ Day.

The night before Samhain continued to be observed with bonfires, costumes, and parades, though under a new name: All Hallows’ Eve—later “Halloween.”

European immigrants brought Halloween to the United States, and the celebration really gathered steam in the 1800s, when Irish-American immigration exploded.

Anoka, Minnesota, may be home to The United States’ oldest official Halloween celebration. Beginning in 1920, the city began staging a parade and bonfire.

Anoka historians say townsfolk wanted to curb Halloween pranks that loosed cows on Main Street and upended outhouses.

HALLOWEEN TODAY

Business of Halloween

In all, U.S. Halloween spending is predicted to reach $5.77 billion, despite the current financial crisis, the U.S. National Retail Federation says.

“Our survey found that consumers will be spending about what they did last year, actually a little bit more,” NRF spokesperson Kathy Grannis said. “This is a great way to forget about 401(k)’s and home values.”

What Average American Will Spend on Halloween

• Costumes: $24.17
• Candy: $20.39
• Decorations: $18.25
• Greeting Cards: $3.73
• TOTAL: $66.54
(Source: 2008 National Retail Federation survey.)

Top Halloween Costumes 2008

NRF also surveyed Americans on their 2008 Halloween costumes. That includes adults too, 52 million of whom are planning to dress for Halloween—a growing trend.

Classic costumes are showing staying power, but TV and the movies are inspiring imitation.

“Costumes like Batman and Hannah Montana are a direct result of what’s going on in Hollywood and with pop culture,” Grannis said.

Five Most Popular Adults’ Costumes

1. Witch (14.9 percent)
2. Pirate (4.4 percent)
3. Vampire (3.3 percent)
4. Cat (2.5 percent)
5 (tie). Fairy or Nurse (1.7 percent)

Five Most Popular Children’s Costumes

1. Princess (10.5 percent)
2. Witch (3.9 percent)
3. Hannah Montana (3.7 percent)
4. Spider-Man (3.5 percent)
5. Pirate (3.3 percent)

Hallmark Holiday

Americans give about 35 million Halloween greeting cards a year, with the most popular variety being grandparent-to-grandchild, according to Deidre Parks, a spokesperson for Missouri-based Hallmark Cards.

“The first Halloween cards that we can detect in the U.S. were produced in 1908,” Parks said.

Sugar Rush

There are some 36 million potential trick-or-treaters (children aged 5 to 13) in the United States, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

In 2007 the average American consumed 24.5 pounds (11 kilograms) of candy, much of it during the Halloween season, according to census data.

Great Pumpkins

Far from the pumpkin’s native Central America, chilly Illinois produces more than 90 percent of U.S. pumpkins.

Across the U.S., farms grew 1.1 billion pounds of the fruit in 2007, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Total value: about $117 million.

The current world record for biggest pumpkin was set in 2007 by a 1,689-pound (766-kilogram) monster grown in Rhode Island.

About 90 percent of a pumpkin’s weight is from water. A champion pumpkin can add 40 pounds a day and grow to roughly the size of a Volkswagen Beetle.

WITCHCRAFT AND WILD TALES

Do You Believe in Magic?
More than a third of Americans say they believe in ghosts, according to an AP-Ipsos poll conducted before Halloween 2007.

Twenty-three percent claimed to have seen a ghost or sensed one’s presence.

About one in five people believe that spells or witchcraft are real, according to the poll. (Learn more about modern witchcraft.)

Halloween Urban Legends

Some Halloween spook stories just won’t die—even if there’s little substance behind the scare.

For example satanic cults, far more common in fiction than in fact, are thought to sacrifice black cats on Halloween.

But experts say there is little evidence for such fears, and that the few isolated incidents involving abused black cats were the work of disturbed—often adolescent—loners.

Candy tainted by poisons, needles, or razor blades is another Halloween hobgoblin.

Sociologist Joel Best said dangerous-candy rumors may be manifestations of fears and anxieties about the future. In a world where so many threats—terrorism, crashing stock markets—seem uncontrollable, Best said, it may be comforting for parents to focus on preventable calamities, such as a child biting into a spiked apple.

Best, of the University of Delaware, conducted a study of alleged tainted Halloween candy incidents.

“I have been unable to find a substantiated report of a child being killed or seriously injured by a contaminated treat picked up in the course of trick-or-treating,” he wrote.

nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/10/
081027-halloween-facts-costumes-history_2.html

Military bases appear to be a popular haunt for wandering spirits, with several attracting the attention of ghost hunters seeking evidence of paranormal activity.

The Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS) in January checked out reports of unexplained phenomena—mysterious footsteps, voices and apparitions—in three buildings at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio for the Sci Fi Channel show Ghost Hunters. Some base personnel have reported seeing the ghost of a blond-haired boy in building 219; others claim to have spotted the apparition of an elderly woman in building 70.

During the episode, TAPS co-founders Grant Wilson and Jason Hawes spend time in building 70, where they claim to hear footsteps one night in the empty office space after urging any spirits there to present themselves. Derek Kaufman, a public affairs specialist with the 88th Air Base Wing, says that the base was happy to have TAPS check out the reports. He notes that he works in building 70, but so far has not had any ghostly encounters of his own.

Ghost sightings at Wright-Patterson are nothing new. Hospital employees working in building 219—a three-story brick building—in the 1990s reported seeing ghosts (one they named “Harvey,” after a doctor who had worked at the hospital in the 1930s and took his own life there) roam the halls daily, according to an October 1996 article in Wright-Patterson AFB’s Skywrighter magazine. Other ghosts include the boy, who appears to be between the ages of eight and 10, as well as older men. Those claiming to have seen the apparitions say they are somewhat transparent but clear enough to distinguish their sex and age. Most of the sightings, according to the article, were on the third floor (where the operating room had been) and in the basement (which at one time housed the morgue).

Colorado Paranormal Investigation (CPI), a Denver-based team of ghost hunters, late last year investigated ghost sightings on F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming using electromagnetic field indicators, digital cameras and tape recorders. CPI investigator Karl Holden requested a visit to the base after reading (in the Fort D. A. Russell edition of the Warren Sentinel) about base personnel sensing the presence of a ghost. CPI’s investigation turned up recordings of what they described as “paranormal heavy breathing, whispering and sobbing” in the base’s Civil Air Patrol building, according to a report by the base’s public affairs department.

The investigators also reported that their camera batteries drained uncharacteristically quickly (which they attributed to spirits drawing energy from the environment) in that building. CPI’s investigation of the base’s 90th Security Forces Group’s Bldg. 34 and Security Forces Investigations building turned up little evidence of the supernatural, although investigators report hearing a book slam against the floor and another flying off a shelf while in the base library. (Alas, neither incident was captured on tape.)

Although not strictly a paranormal encounter, Reuters last week reported on recently revealed information that two U.S. fighter pilots were scrambled at the Royal Air Force base at Manston, Kent in the U.K. in May 1957 with orders to shoot down an unidentified flying object.

No shots were fired, but the mission was kept under wraps until information about it was recently handed over to the National Archives in London, which has tracked numerous reports of UFO encounters over the years. The pilots said that their radar detected a large object in the sky—like a “flying aircraft carrier”—that at times sat motionless and then took off at a speed they estimated to be more than 7,600 miles per hour, Reuters reports. The documents, however, contain no official explanation for the incident.

sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/

post.cfm?id=ghostbusters-are-military-bases-hau-2008-10-27

Many who wonder about the Roswell crash wonder why ET did not retrieve its own craft and crew. How can we fathom that they left their own on the desert floor? This is a question that has an answer, though we have no obligation to provide one. This is because the Alien Intent can never be fully discerned with any certainty. But we can try.

There are seven possible scenarios- one of which may well have played out in July of 1947 over the skies of Chaves and Lincoln Counties:

1) Perhaps the craft that crashed did not have a “companion craft” or “mothership” in the nearby cosmos to be able to arrive in time to Earth to make a recovery. Man has never sent multiple spaceships at the same time to the same destination.

2) If such a ship were in the area, perhaps the retrieval of all the strewn debris, craft components and corpses would have too difficult to accomplish (and cover up) in time to remain undetected. ET did not wish to risk further exposure -or perhaps even confrontation- with Man. It took us many days and many people to retrieve everything. And still it was not done effectively. The retrieval was seen by those who should not have seen, with some of the material being taken by them.

3) Maybe ET did try a crash retrieval, but simply failed to locate the craft and arrive in time. The debris and bodies may have already been discovered by us by then. Sightings of UFOs in the region spiked in the days immediately following the crash. Was ET still looking for its fallen?

4) ET may well have had a concern about the safety of retrieval. Whatever caused the crash to occur in that area at that time (such as a missile or triangulated radar beams) could cause a retrieval craft to come in harm’s way too. The risk assessed, they elected not to initiate a recovery operation.

5) Warring factions of visitors caused one to ram to the ground. The aerial battle engaged- priority and concern was for survival, not retrieval.

6) Just as it was the first time that we did not know immediately quite how to handle the situation, it was the first earthly crash that ET had experienced. They may well have had similar hesitancy or disagreement about dealing with the event. This delay may have prevented a timely retrieval.

7) ET did not want to retrieve. They may have in some way desired to “seed” or “plant” themselves and their technology with Man at that point in history. The crash would give Man concrete knowledge that he is not alone in the Universe. They may have hoped that this would curtail further development of nuclear armament, promoting peace and openness. ET can be wrong.

Man must assign cause or motive to the unexplained. It is our compulsion…for man learns nothing except by going from the known to the unknown. But why they came here, why they crashed and failed to retrieve- are things perhaps forever unknowable.

ufor.blogspot.com/2008/10/why-et-did-not-retrieve-at-roswell-by.html

Rumours are again rife that some kind of reptile or large sea creature is lurking below the water in the Kouris Dam.

Talk of the dam being occupied by a “strange creature” started to circulate three years ago, when a report was made that a crocodile had been dumped in the deep waters.

Since then, there have been countless sightings of the “creature from the depths”, with some local newspapers calling the mystery the “Cyprus Loch Ness”.

One citizen was so adamant he had spotted the creature that he told a newspaper “I watched this serpent with my own two eyes, this was no mistake.”

Despite the speculation, no proof has yet been found and even the Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Affairs have drawn a blank on the Kouris mystery.

An official from the ministry confirmed that they were actively searching for the creature, adding fuel to the rumours that the lake was home to some kind of serpent.

Reports suggest that officials will try and coax the beast from the murky depths by using bait such as live hens and raw meat.

In recent days rain has hampered the search effort, which is expected to resume tomorrow.

A local community leader, Savvas Sava, told a daily newspaper yesterday that if the creature is caught then it will become a tourist attraction and facilities to house it must be constructed.

famagusta-gazette.com/default

FROSTBURG — Robert Hastings said there is a link between unidentified flying objects and the world’s nuclear power production and he will offer proof at a free 8 p.m. lecture Tuesday in the Lane University Center Manicur Assembly Hall at Frostburg State University.

Hastings, a resident of Albuquerque, N.M., has decades worth of research, including previously classified documents recently obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, that he said shows the government’s secretive stance on the existence of UFOs.

An independent UFO researcher and lecturer, Hastings said his interest began in 1967 when he was in an air traffic control tower at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Great Falls, Mont. “Five UFOs were tracked on radar for several minutes,” he said. “Jets were launched to intercept them. Later, I learned from Air Force sources that as the jets closed in, the UFOs performed vertical ascents and left the area at enormous speeds, far beyond the capabilities of any aircraft.”

Hastings said he and other researchers believe that there exists a credible link between the appearance of nuclear weapons in the mid-1940s and the overall increase in UFO sightings worldwide since that time. It is probable, Hastings has said, that one of the reasons the U.S. government has attempted to conceal its extensive knowledge of the UFO phenomenon is because of apprehension about having to acknowledge that unknown observers, piloting enormously superior aerial craft, have been systematically monitoring and occasionally tampering with our nuclear weapons.

Hastings, 58, said his claims are based upon persuasive, documented data. He has interviewed about 100 former and retired U.S. Air Force personnel regarding their direct or indirect involvement in such cases.

Hastings, who has appeared on “Larry King Live,” authored “UFOs and Nukes: Extraordinary Encounters at Nuclear Weapons Sites,” which is available at ufohastings.com.

times-news.com/local/local_story_300011936.html

A werewolf is said to be a person who, at times, turns into a wolf-like beast. Often occurring during the full moon, the term ‘lunacy’ is closely associated with the state. But is there a reality to the werewolf?
We actually know a great deal about them. This is because there have been many trials of werewolves in the past, usually executed for attacks on young children or lonely travelers in the forests.

Misidentification is an obvious possibility here.
Wolves used to roam our forests, and it would be easy, in superstitious times, to come to the conclusion that real wolf attacks were carried out by some person, particularly if he was socially excluded.
There is also a cultural inheritance to the werewolf. From prehistoric cave art we know of the chimera – a half man, half beast image. The shaman was thought to go on quests in the spirit world as an animal-form, and various hunting cults are thought to have dressed as the animal they hunted. The witch’s familiar is an obvious extension of this.

But there are other possibilities.
I find it interesting that most executed ‘werewolves’ were loners, poor, and on the fringes of society. Indeed, their psychology is very similar to what we would call a serial killer today.
Another important theme of werewolfery is the inclusion of a salve or potion taken, usually given to the ‘werewolf’ by a strange black horseman. If we take away the ‘culture’ of such episodes, do we see signs of a drug user and his pusher?

The werewolf suggests, to me, crime.
Are we simply dealing with criminal mentalities that are obvious today, but possibly having a deep influence in our historical past? But if so, why invent such ‘supernatural’ tales around them?
Perhaps the answer is that in a predominantly Christian society it was not believed that the human soul could be evil and depraved. The authorities simply could not accept such behaviour from a human being. Hence, it had to be the beast that did such things.

Of course, this isn’t the whole story.
Whilst I think it accounts for most cases of the werewolf, we have the condition known as lycanthropy, where the person seems to ape the characteristics of the wolf.
As yet, no lycanthrope has ever been accredited as having actually changed into a wolf, so the best answer to this is a form of psychology. One possibility is that such actions are a throwback to past evolutionary behaviour, when we were more animal-like. However, there is another possibility.
We are told that behaviour is encoded in our DNA. In deciding just what is responsible for human action, we talk of nature or nurture, the first this genetic inheritance, the latter our upbringing, environment, etc.
I’ve always thought, however, that there must be a third behavioural influence This is ‘culture’. Basically, if a culture produces a specific type of behaviour that is repeated over several generations, could it become similarly encoded in our DNA?

If so, then the above definitions of criminal behaviour would, over time, become an actual part of our behaviour. Which suggests that what we think of will, at some point in the future, become real – at a psychological level, at least.

beyondtheblog.wordpress.com/2008/10/23/how-to-explain-the-werewolf/

KELOWNA, B.C. — Kelowna’s famed Ogopogo might soon have nowhere left to hide.

‘‘Monster Quest,’’ a television program that airs on the History Channel and examines monster sightings around the world, will begin searching for the Okanagan Lake creature next week.

Kelowna resident Arlene Gaal, who has written three books on the Ogopogo, has been hired by the History Channel as a project consultant.

She said the search will utilize aerial photography, divers, a remote-controlled underwater camera and thermal imaging.

‘‘Thermal imaging can sense a heat source below the surface,’’ Gaal said. ‘‘It’s never been utilized in Okanagan Lake.’’

The Monster Quest crew will not be the first to attempt to capture the creature on film. A Japanese television network sent camera crews to Kelowna in 1990 and again in 1992, to no avail.

The first video footage alleged to be of the Ogopogo is believed to have been shot in 1968 by local resident Art Folden.

Gaal said the Monster Quest program will include several witnesses who claim they have seen the creature in the lake recently, including one man who took 24 pictures of ‘‘something out in the water’’ from his balcony earlier this year.

The search is expected to last until Nov. 9.

portagedailygraphic.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=1259639

There’s something out there…

And the men and women of cryptozoology are determined to find it. The researchers in this relatively obscure science face ridicule, financial struggles and harsh skepticism in their quest to uncover the secrets of mystery animals such as Bigfoot, Nessie and Chupacabras.

Chasing Discovery seeks to understand the researchers who delve into the zoological unknown. The cryptozoologists featured have devoted decades to researching undiscovered animals, and are among the foremost researchers in the field. Many scientists have deemed cryptozoology a pseudoscience and a poor use of time, but these researchers are unfazed.

The financial sacrifices that they have made have allowed the research to continue, but even the world’s leading cryptozoologist struggles to pay the rent each month.

Chasing Discovery takes a unique approach towards cryptozoology, turning the cameras on the researchers themselves rather than focusing on the animals they study. It is the story of unyielding passion in a field of uncertainty.

Total Running Time: 40 minutes

Bonus Features: 15 minutes of bonus features, including a Loren Coleman guided tour through the International Museum of Cryptozoology, and Jeff Meldrum giving a tour of his Idaho State University research lab, featuring more than two hundred Bigfoot footprint casts.

cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/chasing-discovery-2/

New Jersey’s pine barrens might qualify as the strangest stretch of woods in the world. It is completely out of place, a huge thick pine forest with only a sparse rural population situated among developed and largely urban New Jersey. The Pine Barrens is just the type of place for a cryptid, and boy does it have one. Of course, I speak of the Jersey Devil.

The most famous tale of the origins of this cryptid is of Mother Leeds. In 1735, the story goes, the good mother had given birth to twelve children. Said to be a witch, Leeds said that if she had child number 13, it would be the devil himself. Variations of the story say that the Devil was the father, but in any case, the child was born completely normal. Within minutes, it killed the midwife, grew a horse’s head, forked tail, wings and hooves and escaped through the chimney and went directly toward the Pine Barrens.

But this may not be entirely true. The Native American Lenni Lenape tribes called the Pine Barrens “The place of the dragon”, and other name places and accounts may suggest an origin that predates Mother Leeds. The first well documented sighting dates from the early 19th century when the famous early American naval commodore Stephen Decatur visited a foundry in the barrens searching for a source for decent cannon balls. He related a story of seeing a white creature with huge wings flying overhead, and directed cannon fire at it. The story goes that the creature was entirely oblivious to the hole Decatur made in its wing.

Perhaps the most famous person to see the Devil was Joseph Bonaparte. Most people aren’t aware that this older brother of Napoleon Bonaparte, and former King of Spain, called Bordentown, New Jersey home for some years. Unwelcome - and perhaps wanted - in Europe he fled France before the capture of Napoleon and bought a lovely rural estate, not far as monster flies from the Pine Barrens. He is said to have seen the Jersey Devil in 1820.

In the 1840’s the Devil was blamed for numerous livestock killings (though one wonders how many of those were actually related to the UFO phenomena). But, unlike many cryptids and paranormal phenomena, the sightings of the devil increased. By 1909 thousands had claimed to see the Jersey Devil, most of them between the dates of January 16-23. Newspapers went wild with the story, Numerous accounts of the horse-faced, winged devil surfaced, and mass hysteria set in. The devil was said to attack a trolley car, schools closed, a local fire department claimed to stave off the monster with a hose, and the local economy screeched to a halt when business owners were too fearful to open their doors.

Sightings continued with regularity throughout the 20th century. But the range of the Devil seems to be increasing. 2008 has already seen two sightings, both well out of the Pine Barrens area, and well out of New Jersey in fact. The first was January in in Litchfield, Pennsylvania, where a farmer saw the creature in his barn. The second was in Rising Sun, Maryland just a few weeks ago on August 18th, where three people observed the creature flying past their car, landing in a field a short distance away. The Jersey Devil is still with us, unlike many cryptids, and seems to be increasing its range….

paranormala.com/jersey-devils-range-increasing/