The Chud Thread of The Unexplained. - Page 2

Rain Dog,

I keep trying to write a big post before realizing the thread has passed me by. But since Singer and Schwartz are saying the same things, I hope it all comes together.

Basically, what is maddening to me is that a lot of these theories seem primarily designed to avoid testability. That is, there's no way to disprove them, or repeat them, or even describe them sometimes. And if that's true, then let's just go ahead and post in the Religion Forum.

And as Singer said, animals are 100% natural, I don't know where the supernatural part would come in. (Part of it is the wording: if this thread were called Cool and Obscure Science Stuff there'd be less discord.)

Not to say that science stuff couldn't fit in here, in fact, I think a lot of the coolest, unexplained things aren't ghosts or monsters, but the questions science has asked but hasn't answered yet, like, what the hell is that roar from the deep of space they heard a month ago? What started the universe? What happens when something goes into the mouth of a black hole? String theory, quantum physics. Kind of a stretch of the thread title, I know, but there's something even more satisfying and chilling than say, a chupacabra.

But while we're on the topic of unexplained things: New World Americans and the depictions of creatures from the sky with elongated skulls and large eyes, and the giant pictures etched into the earth that can only be seen from the sky.

What fascinates is me is the deep ocean. I know we've all heard the "we know more about the surface of the moon than we do our own planet" mantra but take a minute to think about it. Its true and its both sad, scary and fascinating. What IS down there? Every time a newfangled submersible is sent down we find something weird and previosuly unimagined. How long will it be before a sub sees something truly astonishing?

And no, this is not a viral plug for Meg.

Also, dark matter. If it exists and if it does what they think it does what does that mean to our understanding of physics and what "lies between" atoms and known space. Maybe Warren Ellis is a prophet, I don't know.

But I love this kind of shit.

Didn't you see Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? It explains all of this.

It tickles me when someone talks about how patently ridiculous religion is (Back from the dead? Water to wine? Old man in the clouds? Bullshit!) and then turns around and says they believe in Bigfoot and ghosts.

ETA: Not a dig directed at anyone in this thread.

Gorillas were thought to be a myth, then we found them. Same with giant squid.

We have yet to confirm the existence of the giant squid. We are holding out hope that the info coming from the set has been deliberately falsified. - Superherohype

I'm fascinated as well, but I'm afraid that if there is any kind of cool-ass new aquatic lifeform (or a Bigfoot, Mothman, Nessie, or a chupacabra) some ass back on the ship will try and find a way of making a buck off it, whether by exploiting it, fucking with it's environment, or wondering if it tastes like chicken.

That's the saddest part of explaining the Unexplained. Takes the romance out of the thing.

ETA: Damn, Doc - almost spit out my drink. Rep to you, sir!

Fuck a KKK girl.

Or if it's an aphrodesiac.

http://news.mongabay.com/2007/1101-chupacabra.html

I heard the Puerto Rican gov. story two or three years ago. Don't remember the source.

Saying somebody needs to have an open mind means what, exactly? It means they must be open to the possibility that a claim is true? Any good scientist will tell you they are. Yet being open to a possibility is different from believing something is true with no testable evidence.

Science, as a tool, is used to explain and predict events in nature. It is designed to deduce simply the best theory to explain and predict phenomena. Having an "open mind" means nothing when applying the scientific method to any phenomenon in nature. Either a claim is testable and falsifiable, or it is untestable and therefore impossible to validate. I detest the term "open mind", because it is meaningless. Either evidence supports a claim, or it doesn't. There are no "shades of gray" when it comes to validating claims.

That said, events have occurred that just plain freak me out. These events are not conclusive evidence for any phenomenon, but they are (so far) unexplained. Try these on for size (wiki them for more info):

Dyatlov Pass Incident: A group of snow-bound hikers mysteriously die, leaving behind nothing but questions as to the nature of their demise. Freaky story.

Frederick Valentich Incident: a young man flying a single-engine Cessna in southern Australia calls a control tower reporting that another craft is on top of him, seemingly playing a cat-and-mouse game with the plane. He claims it is not an aircraft, and a minute later the tower loses contact. The last transmission from the man is a series of metallic scraping sounds. The plane and man have not been seen since.

Cash-Landrum Encounter: Two women and a young boy were driving at night down a road in Texas when they encountered a diamond-shaped craft hovering over the road emitting bright light. They briefly exit the car, but get back in due to intense heat. One woman leaves an impression of her hand in the car's dashboard, which was softening from the heat. Days after the encounter, the women and boy begin suffering hair loss, skin rashes, and other signs that seem to be radiation poisoning. The women sue the United States government, but the case is dismissed due to lack of evidence.

The "Bloop": NOAA underwater sensors picked up a low-cycling sound originating in the deep Pacific ocean that has yet to be identified or explained. The sound bears earmarks of an organic sound - but scientists surmise that any animal making that sound would be much bigger than the largest animal known today - the blue whale.

Who or what actually sank the MS Estonia?

http://www.newstatesman.com/200505230019

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Estonia

Matches, thank you for sending a chill down my back. Those are the kind of incidents I love. Never heard of the Bloop before, but like how it's attributed to Cthulhu!

The Bloop is a big part of Steve Alten's The Loch.

Also, this freaks me out more than a little:

Case in point. I read these 2 articles today. Scroll down to the pink iguana,
Alten's LOCH spins an interesting theory about this. The migration and mating cycle of a certain eel.
That was me.
The Bloop.
Creeeeepy.

Love this stuff. And yeah, I like MONSTERQUEST and look forward to getting caught up on THE LOST TAPES.

Around 2003 there was a documentary (obviously filmed in the late '80s/early '90s) aired on SciFi. It was about a trio of documentarians filming in a woman's haunted house for 24 hours. One of the events I clearly remember was a photographer getting hanged on a nail by a wire in the attic. He was completely alone. Then, while comforting him on camera, all people accounted for, suddenly there were footprints sounding from above them.

Now that I think about the documentary, it sounds like a hoax, but I clearly remember their expressions (including the mother's concern) being too honest to be faked (ala Blair Witch).

Ring anyone's bells?

No, this is Creeeepy...

http://homepage.mac.com/nickersonres...oAlbum483.html

The purpose of this website is one of those mysteries that I don't really want to know the answer to. It could be harmless. Maybe someone looking for a long lost relative. Or it could be the worst thing ever in the history of evers. Stay hidden, Boy on Bike! Just to be safe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostwatch

It's fake.

It's a viral for that travel company with a gnome mascot.

I'm sure the Chupacabra is a mixture of real attacks on farm animals by either the feral monkeys that live in the forests here (and, no, that's not a joke) or the stray dogs that live EVERYWHERE here, or hoaxes. But, no, our government has never said anything along those lines.

I get annoyed when people call the Goatsucker a Mexico/South America thing. That was OUR monster, dammit! It started here, and not in the 1990's, either. That's when it started up AGAIN, but there was a small rash back in the Idon'tknowwhat's.

I'm pretty sure that Sasquatch is/was as real as you and I at one point. The only thing, as far as I'm concerned, that's up to discussion is how large the population still is in 2009. Hell, even the Yeti is completely plausible. Those might still be around even more than Mr. Bigfoot.

My uncle worked on a shitload of Top Secret stuff for the Air Force and he's told us that there's a shitload of stuff that nobody knows about. I'd say he was just teasing me and my cousins when we were young, but he'd hint at things to the adults in the family as well, and he's really not a guy who makes jokes. He's in the "UFOs are mostly army experiments" side of the argument.

For some background: the Roosevelt Roads Naval Station the U.S. had in Puerto Rico doubled as a place where submarines carrying nuclear arms docked. My uncle said that the Station was mostly cover and it extended underground A LOT. I recall he also said about underwater stations, or at least plans for them. And this was in the 70's, so who knows if that got off the ground.

Track down Karl P.N. Shuker's In Search of Prehistoric Survivors. AWESOME book, really fuckin' great.

Edit: By the way, if I suddenly disappear, someone PrtScn my post as evidence kthnxbai

Nah, I've already heard of that one...

This one took place in Burbank... It was filmed on a shitty early video camera... It had only one reenactment at the very end concerning a seance... Red goo leaked from the walls... The baby had a soot fingerprint on its forehead at one point...

Yeah, 'GhostWatch' was fake...

...but the description of the documentary above sure as Hell ain't 'GhostWatch'.

See, this is why people came here to bash this thread. That's so over the top obviously not real that it shouldn't be in this unexplained thread. It's explained. It's syrup and editing.

They went to a place called Kholat Syakhl, which means "Mountain of the Dead". Do a little research, people! That is a freaky story though.

Reading the Wikipedia article on this, there were reports of a small plane landing shortly after his last transmission in an out-of-the-way field. He may have been faking his disappearance for whatever reason.

I trust you. I spoke from a memory of hearing something on the news two or three years ago in a brief newsclip...

THANK YOU! I live in a Navy/Air Force town. I take this viewpoint for granted.

(Copied from another thread...) My siblings and I poured over the TIME-LIFE Mysteries of the Unknown book series with much enthusiasm... our primer for the adventures of Mulder & Scully.

Read the book! Awesome.
Mysteries of the Unknown
The Enchanted World!
Vincent Price, book pimp! Part 1
Vincent Price, book pimp! Part 2

The fossil record gets "re-written" with every new discovery. Just like there are uncountable species in the depths of the oceans, there are uncountable buried fossils beneath our feet. It's pretty hard to give an accurate timeline for when things became extinct completely.

Could be this guy (survivors, relative, or imprint on the collective unconscious): Gigantopithecus

They say he "existed from roughly one million years to as recently as three-hundred thousand years ago", but how do they know for certain that a spin-off didn't stick around longer? And if relatively few fossils of that guy have been found, how can they predict an accurate timeline for his existence?
Sounds neato.

Dharma?

I saw this documentary once about the Mansquito. Did anyone else ever see it or heard of this mysterious creature?

It sucks.

Never heard of it. Was it a full-length documentary, or was it a segment on another show like Sightings or The Unexplained?

For the record, this has been an enjoyable thread to follow today. I can't wait to explore some of the links that you've posted when I get home from work this evening.

AKA MOSQUITO MAN???

I believe I caught it on the Science-Fidelity (Sci-Fi for short) Channel.

This Aurora stuff is nonsense. No one has any idea of (other than those involved) of what really goes on with military testing. I love the idea of all these real awesome aircraft that we may or may not fly, but truth of the matter is we'll never know for sure.
I wouldn't take anyone's word for what has been hinted at. If those people are involved they seriously lack any sort of integrity and are a huge security risk by giving up little bits of info.
Security clearances are there for a reason.

I grew up reading and re-reading this:
http://www.amazon.com/Unexplained-Si.../dp/1578590701
Some of it was obviously fake (I'm naturally a skeptic and disbelieve %80 of what I encounter) but some of it was pretty freaky. Unfortunately the internet has rendered most of these books obsolete -- more variety, greater depth. Plus my copy is woefully out of date.

Oh yeah, my sister, cousin, and me all formed our own paranormal investigation group as a kids, inspired by 'X-Files' of course. We spent hours in the library scrolling through microform (pre-internet) and even interviewed a couple of people. All in good fun. All in good fun.

Along with the documentary about the legendary Frankenfish.

My favorite mystery from this book had nothing to do with things like the Flatwoods Monster, or living pterodactyls being found in lumps of coal, or the devils footprints being found across rooftops and up the sides of houses, or giant Thunderbirds. Instead it was the much more mundane, apparently documented and just as equally perplexing story about a gigantic wrecking ball that was there when the construction workers left in the evening and had vanished without a trace from the crane by the time they arrived early the next morning. I suppose it could have been abducted by aliens. Or fell into a temporary dimensional rip. Those seem like the most logical explanations. But seriously, I've always wanted to know what came of that wrecking ball.

Funny how life is. This just popped up on Yahoo's main page:

Fossils Reveal Bus-Sized 2,500-Pound Snake

I know I'm not the only one thinking it...

I know I'm not the only one thinking it...

The claims of the locals about orange orbs of light seen on the mountain can be eliminated as anecdotal, but the nature of the injuries to the hikers -as well as the unknown reason they exited their tents in the first place - just gives me the damn creeps.

Also creepy is the nebulous accounts of the pass being closed off and impassible for years after the incident.


While this is plausible, there is no evidence supporting the unidentified plane landing beyond - again - anecdotal reports. Of course, there have been many stories trying to discredit the pilot over the years. Phillip Klass insinuated that Valentich was a drug smuggler without a shred of evidence, and there was much confusion caused regarding Valentich's flight plan. Stories surfaced that Valentich didn't file a flight plan, when in fact he did.

Basically, the Valentich case will remain unsolved until the plane, the body, or Valentich, alive and well, turn up.

I probably should have been able to guess that.

I will do that.

There was one book I read a long time ago and I'm blanking on the title, if I find it I'll edit it in here, in which the author claims to have seen Mokele Membe. The last chapter of the book is him waking up and hearing something massive walking nearby and bringing down trees but his guide stops him from approaching it. I swear I'm not making this up, I'm going to go find it now.

Two guys who were sort of rock stars in this field back when I was a kid were J. Allen Hynek and Ivan Sanderson. Hynek was the resident UFO guru (he even got a cameo in Close Encounters), while Sanderson was the cryptozoologist. They seemed to turn up on almost every special and In Search Of episode when an expert was needed.

Wow, definitely looks like a gorilla. Maybe leftover test footage from Congo? That is kinda freaky though.

I definitely remember watching this one ... it was definitely like you said ... sometime in the early 90's.

I think it was this: http://www.worldoftheunknown.com/unknownEncounter.html


Also, everything I've read on The Bloop is both awesome and freaky.

Amazon's "used & new" option has the book I mentioned available for less than $20, which is pretty good. I really reccomend it, it's a great read.

And Jerome Clark's Unexplained! mentioned by JetManX is a great read, too. I have the version in his link, with the purple cover. There's a previous one with a black cover, but the purple one is revised.

Loren Coleman seems to have dropped off the face of the Earth, and what little he puts out is just rehashes of his previous stuff. John A. Keel is... I dunno where. Even Clark seems to have retired for now, and Shuker just writes about normal, boring known animals now, although he did put out a book about animals from fantasy tales.

It's a sad state for crypto books.

Yeah, this thread became cool after I left (coincidence?)

Matches_Malone, keep up the good work.

Great thread!

For those of you interested in UFOs and the resemblance of many Contactee stories to Fairy stories in Medieval times see the work of Jacques Vallee

He is by far the most interesting theorist of unexplained phenomenon

The stories of El Chupacabra that I've read have it being a blood drinking beast with wings, a horrible stench and the ability to hypnotize people who see it (no to mention the goats that they prey on!). A dog with mange just don't cut it.

My father was in the Navy and he also told me that the weapons we are aware of like the Stealth fighter are the tip of the iceberg . I mean look how public those planes are (hell I've got photos of them from Air Shows!).

That story about extensive underground bases in Puerto Rico is really interesting because a lot of UFO buffs claim that UFOs have a base underneath a bay in Puerto Rico as well. I suspect the US Military has gotten a lot of mileage out of UFOs over the years.

Oh and for unexplained events you can't the Tunguska event in Siberia

I hate how the History Channel is now nothing but Monster Quest and UFO Hunters...where the hell is all the cool WW2 stuff?!