A perfect episode for Halloween! Legendary researcher and author Stan Gordon joins us to talk about creepy cryptids in part one of this week’s show. In part two, Werewolves and Mothman are the topics of discussion with Nick Redfern.

You can find Nick & Stan’s books at Amazon:

Creepy Cryptids and Strange UFO Encounters of Pennsylvania. Bigfoot, Thunderbirds, Mysteries of the Chestnut Ridge and More. Casebook Four by Stan Gordon: https://amzn.to/46eT2ND

Werewolf Stories: Shape-Shifters, Lycanthropes, and Man-Beasts by Nick Redfern & Brad Steiger: https://amzn.to/3tix9OS

Mothman & Other Flying Monsters: Nuclear Nightmares & Armageddon by Nick Redfern: https://amzn.to/46xphHB

Thanks Stan & Nick!

This post contains Amazon affiliate links that benefit Jim Harold Media when you make a qualifying purchase. Thank you for your support!

-TRANSCRIPT-

Jim:

Creepy cryptids, werewolves, Mothman and more with Stan Gordon and Nick Redfern on this edition of the Paranormal Podcast.

Announcer:

This is the Paranormal Podcast with Jim Harold.

Jim:

Welcome to the Paranormal Podcast. I am Jim Harold and so glad to be with you once again and it is definitely Halloween time. Now we are in the month of October, so no more pretending that it’s not Halloween time. It is! So happy Halloween to each and every one of you. We’ve got a show today that will perfectly fit the mood. First up is Stan Gordon talking about creepy cryptids, then followed up with Nick Redfern talking about werewolves and Mothman, perfect for this time of year. And I like to think that our shows are perfect for this time of the year. So if you feel the same way, please share a show today with a friend while you’re listening to this, assuming you’re in a safe place to do so. Not while driving, but when you are listening on your phone, just tap share in the podcast app of your choice and share it with some friends who you know are into creepy stuff this time of the year, whether it’s this show or the Campfire, I would certainly appreciate it. And now we will get right to this creepy edition of the Paranormal Podcast. 

And I must say there are certain people who loom large in their areas of expertise. I’m thinking about people like the late great Stanton Freedman, Brad Steiger, Rosemary Ellen Guiley, Nick Redfern. The list goes on and on. People are very accomplished in their fields, and when you talk about both UFOs and Cryptids, particularly Bigfoot, there’s a figure who looms large in both areas. And I’m talking about Stan Gordon. As I understand it this is his 64th year in research into the UFO and Bigfoot phenomena, and he just seems to go from strength to strength. He’s been on many TV shows, many radio shows. He’s written multiple books. For example, his latest creepy cryptids and strange UFO Encounters of Pennsylvania. He also was the award-winning producer of the UFO documentary Kecksburg: the Untold Story, and he appears at numerous conferences and we just got to meet for the first time this last spring at Monster Fest in Ohio. And it was a pleasure and so glad we were able to schedule time with the legend himself. Stan Gordon is on the line. We’re so glad to have him. Stan, welcome to the program

Stan Gordon:

And thanks for having me back on. I think we did a program several years ago.

Jim:

Yes. I should have had you on back sooner, I apologize. But better late than never. Better late than never. I guess the first thing that I would ask, because a lot of people will specialize in one area, they’ll say, okay, UFOs are my thing, and I’m going to follow up with UFOs and I’m going to hit that hard. And some people say, well, Bigfoot, that’s my thing and I’m going to hit that hard. But you’ve done both and at a very deep level. How did that kind of happen? Why those two kind of, I guess in a way you might call ’em an odd couple. How did that come together for you?

Stan Gordon:

Well, it’s been a long journey and I’ve been out in the field since 1965, starting this in 1959 as a 10 year old kid who’s interested in science. I just happened to hear a radio show talking about unusual happenings, and I started reading about these things and I was 16 when the incident happened near Kecksburg, Pennsylvania. So I’ve been out in the field since 1965 investigating UFO sightings and Bigfoot and encrypted and all kinds of other anomalies and it’s, it’s been a very, very interesting journey for so many years. But I need to give a little bit of history so people understand. And actually you mentioned Stanton Friedman. In late 1969.  believe it was the late sixties, I should actually say. There was a small research group in Pittsburgh called the UFO Research Institute. It was a group of some Westinghouse scientists, I think engineers, some other professionals. And I was the kid of the group, but I already had a lot of experience interviewing people. And that’s where Stanton Friedman was involved in that group was he was just getting started. 

Jim:

Yeah, he worked for Westinghouse, didn’t he?

Stan Gordon:

Yes, he did. And so when they would get a report of a sighting, I would actually do the initial interviews and see if the cases warranted further investigation. And I stayed with them until they closed down their operation. And I believe it was 1969, and I decided to set up a hotline for the public to report UFO sightings here in my area. I’m about 30 some miles east of Pittsburgh, Greensburg, Pennsylvania. And I began to make contact with the police in the news media, and within weeks, my phone on my home was ringing off the hook and people were calling in about not just UFOs, but anything strange and unusual. And it became apparent I couldn’t do this all on my own. So I decided I was going to try to set up a volunteer group of researchers to investigate the reports. It was very lucky that I did because in 1970, I found the first, the three groups for many, many years would investigate phenomena in Pennsylvania.

The group start out small, but I was amazed who I had involved. I had scientists, engineers, technicians, police officers, former military specialists, all kinds of specialists who volunteer their time. We all did this around our full-time jobs. By 1973, I had it set up so we expanded to cover the whole state of Pennsylvania, and we would respond to cases 24 hours a day as best we could, which we did in many cases. And it was very lucky because 1973 comes around and we had the first, had the biggest UFO outbreak ever documented. And of course, you got to remember 1973, there’s no internet, there’s no cell phones like today, but many of the local and statewide, even national newspapers picked up a lot of these reports. I read a whole book about called Solid Invasion. There was hundreds and hundreds of UFO sightings, and many of these were low level reports of large structured objects, pacing vehicles, hovering over highways or landing reports. It was just amazing. 

So we were just so busy just investigating all these UFO reports. Then in the summer of ‘73, we had the biggest outbreak of Bigfoot sightings ever documented. That went on to 1974. In early ‘74 multitudes of Bigfoot sightings, many in daylight, many in close range, in some cases more than one creature seen together in many instances, myself or my teams were on site within minutes to hours after these incidents occurred. So we were able to document these cases. So I can tell you the one thing I was involved with was some of the Bigfoot investigation in 1960s. I had always believed that Bigfoot was probably some type of unknown primate, some type of specimen that science had never confirmed. But as the incidents are coming to our attention in 1973 from widespread areas, vetting referrals from law enforcement and the news media to my research group, some very strange things showed up.

And you probably are aware some of those cases, they’re very interesting, they’re very involved. If you want to talk about ’em, we’re fine. But there were instances where UFOs and Bigfoot were seen together at the same time and place. And when I talk about these cases, the more I’ve learned about these things, I wrote about these things in the seventies and now these things are going on all over the country and around the world. I’ve learned a lot about the phenomena. I don’t have the answers, nobody does. I’m just telling you, we’re dealing with some phenomenon that is so beyond a present scientific understanding, but a lot of these various anomalies, nobody understands this for a lack of a better term, I’ll call it interdimensional. And I think a lot of what we’re dealing with, not of all, it might be extraterrestrial, maybe a small percentage, but I think more and more we’re dealing with a phenomena that has a physical and a non-physical component to it.

Jim:

So that would explain, I mean, the thing that, first of all, I mean when you talk about anomalous activity, and honestly, I’ve said this to the audience before, Bigfoot is one that I’m not fully convinced on because for example, we haven’t found a body, and I know that there are usual explanations like nature takes care of its own, and you don’t walk through the woods and find a deer carcass, but it would be like, well, we’ll find something, but this would explain why we don’t find hair, we don’t find teeth, we don’t find any remnant because they’re interdimensional. But you said there’s also a physical component. So can you explain that, the duality there?

Stan Gordon:

Yeah, and again, it’s very similar with many of the UFO or UAP reports we’ve had in the past and even recently, lots and lots of ongoing activity right now in Pennsylvania for weeks and months, many daylight UFO sightings, for example. But I can tell you I’ve investigated thousands of UFO cases, hundreds of cryptic cases over the years, and I received these reports all the time. My hotline has been open since 1969. In many instances, we have large structured objects even in daylight that in some cases slowly just fade away and vanish or they physically changed from one form to another. And I can tell you in the last couple of years, and if you go to my website, you’ll see some pictures, these large cigar shaped objects, which we do have some pictures of in many cases in recent weeks and months, these things are hovering in beautiful afternoons and they;re suddenly just gone.

They don’t take off and accelerate, they’re just gone. That’s what we’re hearing from many witnesses from many different areas of the state. And I know many other reports from other states as well are ongoing as well. But anyhow, with the Bigfoot cases, going back to ‘73 for example, and still ongoing in past years, so we’re getting reports all year round, including the wintertime in snow. My teams are on the scene. We have very large unusual footprints with big strides between them that go a distance and suddenly just abruptly stopped when there should have been more tracks. And that’s been going on for quite a long time now. That was one of the first things that began to make us like, what are we dealing with here? There’s no way under the conditions we found them, it could have been fabricated. But then we had some significant incidents in ‘73, and there were two of ’em that really stand out.

They’re both detailed, but the one case that convinced me that we’re dealing with something is not a normal animal, occurred February 6th, 1974, up in Fayette County, PA, which continues to be probably one of the most active areas in the country year after year, including this year, especially along areas along the Chestnut Ridge, which you may have heard about and you’ll probably be hearing more about in the future because there’s a lot of interest in it now. This is an area where there’s a lot of ongoing phenomena taking place. But anyhow, would you like me to tell you that story?

Jim:

Sure, please do.

Stan Gordon:

Okay, so it’s February 6th, 1974. Some of your listeners will remember when it happened because it was a big national trucker strike. There was gas rationing, which a lot of people remember. There was a lot of violence on the highways across the country. In Pennsylvania they had the National Guard patrolling with the state police. So you had some members of both units that responded to this incident. I could not get up to the scene early the next morning. I couldn’t get gas in my town. Anyhow, so that evening, deep in the mountains, way up deep in the mountains. Here’s this woman, lives in her cabin home, has been there for years, knows animals very well, is a very good shot. She’s sitting there watching TV as normal. She hears this commotion on her front porch, small front porch. She had some empty soda cans out there. Something’s knocking the soda cans around.

So she thought, well, a couple weeks ago there was a pack of wild dogs came through, bet the dogs are back. So she’s thinking, I’ll grab my 16 gauge double barrel shotgun. I’ll load one chamber and I’ll just shoot over their heads and scare those dogs away, which is what she proceeds to do. So she has her loaded shotgun. She walks up to the front towards the door, she turns on the switch for the outside porch light, opens the door and walks out. Six feet in front of her is a seven foot tall, large hair covered Bigfoot, put his arm straight up over its head when the light went on. How does she react? She pulls the trigger. She says, there’s this bright flash of light like the flash on a camera, and that huge hair covered creature vanishes and gone, but that’s not the end of the story.

So her in-laws lived a hundred feet away. They hear the gunshot and they call, “So what you shooting at?”, she tries to tell him. So her son-in-law grabs his pistol. He starts walking down that road towards the house, and apparently at one point he encountered four or five hairy people with eyes, like coals of fire, who start shooting at him randomly. And about the same time, there’s this very large luminous object covering over the woods at the same time. So that’s when they called the state police for help. And I talked to the primary investigator. He said, by the time they got up there and found it way up in the mountains, everything was over but he said, the witnesses were sincerely frightened. They were very shaken. They gave great detail about what they saw. But he said what convinced him was the animal reactions. And I don’t think I told you this when we started, Jim, but in all the years I’ve been doing this now, excuse me, I have never personally seen a Bigfoot or UFO myself.

I’ve seen a lot of evidence, but I have never seen one. I think I was close to a Bigfoot, but I never saw one. Anyhow, he said when they got on scene, they had numerous animals there, including several big dogs. Everything was quiet. The dogs would not bark, they would not move. And that’s something that’s consistent even in recent weeks, with other Bigfoot reports for years and years. So as you know with a history of UFO phenomena and Bigfoot cases and sometimes other cryptids, you have these various types of electromagnetic effects involved and various type of odd occurrences that take place. And there’s a lot more to the Bigfoot phenomena than most people realize. I have a whole lecture I do on this. In fact, I’m doing it this Saturday in Flatwood at the Flatwoods Conference of West Virginia. And I’ll give you an example.

Historically, as you know this, going back to the least the fifties, you have these large structured objects hovering your vehicles. And sometimes when nearby the engines of the vehicle begin to spider their headlights begin to dim, the object takes off and the power comes back on. Well, not very well known is that there are a similar case with Bigfoot encounters. So I’ve investigated Pennsylvania and there’s others around the country and they’re not very often talked about. There’s not a lot of cases, but there’s some out there where a vehicle is very close to a large hairy Bigfoot creature while the creature is close by, it begins to lose power or the headlights dim, the creatures walk off and the power comes back on very similar electromagnetic effects.

Jim:

Now, one thing I want to ask about, I saw that this is in your latest book that we talked about, Creepy Cryptids and Strange UFO Encounters of Pennsylvania. You talk about a Mothman encounter near Pittsburgh in 1966. Now I know we most of us associate Mothman with John Keel and the Mothman Prophecies and the Silver Bridge collapse in West Virginia, I believe in ‘67. Tell us about this one though, because it sounds fascinating.

Stan Gordon:

Well, yeah, I remember very well all the newspaper stories that took place here in the Pittsburgh area during the time that the Mothman was being reported down there in Point Pleasant West Virginia in that part of West Virginia. And there were rumors circulating there, rumors circulating that something similar was being seen in the Pittsburgh area. But back then it was extremely hard to track down because again, there was no cell phones or internet like it is today. And for years and years, I heard the rumors and was many, many years later that I found a witness who was involved in an incident around that time period in Allegheny County, in the Pittsburgh area. Now actually. So I wrote that up, one of my other books called Astonishing Encounters, and then it was years later that I think it was in 2010, that I met a author in Pittsburgh, not into the paranormal, but into other interesting things.

And he told me his personal account of being the best friend, a close friend to a fella that had what appeared to be a Mothman-type experience in 1966 in another area of Allegheny County. So around the same time as this other incident I had learned about, and it’s a long involved story, but I can just tell you he was there. This fella had apparently been on a date with this girl parking somewhere, and this very strange occurrence took place with them. And the guy apparently came through their home and he was in shock, and he ended up being taken to the hospital that night.

But anyhow, this creature was apparently standing right next to their vehicle, looking directly at them. And if I recall, he had glowing red eyes about eight feet tall as I recall. I have to go back and look at the whole report. But anyhow, they were both very, very frightened over this whole thing. And this fellow apparently had some kind of like a sunburn red effect on his face, something like a sunburn, which of course did not happen during the time of the experience. So anyway, it is a very, very fascinating case, Jim. I deal with a lot of strange reports here, some very amazing cryptid reports that go on all the time. A lot of these are things that people aren’t even familiar with. For example, back in 2017, I believe it was, and in fact I believe that’s actually in this book as well, there was, I’ve started to get these reports and it’s possibly that I may have heard a reporter or something somewhat similar, but these are when these really detailed reports came in.

And this was in August of 2017. And this was a significant report because it came in from a police officer who had just seen this thing while on patrol, and he contacted me. He was pretty shaken, and he’d been a police officer for years, I’ll just say here in Western Pennsylvania. And anyhow, he was on patrol that evening and he sees what looks like a ball of light. And now when you hear this, we’re not going to get it confused with, we may talk about these other strange orbs or spheres of light that are completely different, but he sees this ball of light on the ground and he’s thinking, I’ve never seen an artificial lighting like that in the area. So he stops this car, and suddenly this ball of light rises up from the ground. And he realized that this ball of light’s actually the head of a creature of least six feet or taller, he said, it’s tall and with skeletal thin.

And he said, when I interviewed him, he said, apparently this thing was lying on its belly with its head facing the road. And then it stood up facing the road and the glowing head was illuminating the upper section of the body. And he said, the creature turned to the right and he could see the shoulders lit up, part of the shoulders lit up from it. And then he said it turned and then it turned to the left and took off. He says, the most incredible speed he has ever seen it. Basically it was there and it was gone. He said it was faster than anything I’d ever seen in my life. It was there and it was gone. And that’s so intriguing because I hear almost the same kind of statement from some UFO witnesses and other people who have seen a Bigfoot that suddenly appears out of nowhere, even in daylight in front of their vehicle, suddenly comes out of nowhere.

They see it move a short distance and suddenly it’s gone again. These are the kinds of things you don’t often hear about Bigfoot reports, but they’ve been occurring all around the country for years. And I’m in touch with many other well-known and other researchers who kind of keep quiet, but they’re very involved and there’s a lot more of this going on than anybody knows. But anyhow, talking about this particular case, he said that the head was about eight to 10 inches in diameter, shaped more like a ball, maybe a little more egg shaped, that the light seemed to be just dull white. It illuminated the shoulders, the top of the chest and the section of the arms. And he said the chest looked to be about 18 inches across. The waist appeared to be small, the arms were unusually long, long limbs looked skeletal with no muscle mass.

The skin tone appeared to be kind of a dullish gray blue, and he couldn’t see any facial features. Anyhow, within weeks, I was getting other reports from other areas, and then the year later, up in the border between Armstrong and Allegheny County, I talked to a fellow and I actually was at the house and he’s telling me he lived deep in the woods, and this guy basically lived with the deer and lived with the animals out there, and he was up there working up in the woods that evening when he heard this odd bipedal sound. But he knew what he’s hearing is not a deer. It didn’t sound like a normal human walking, and it kind of shook him up a little. So he went down to his house and he’s sitting there at the dining room table about 10 feet away from the big back door that faces of the window, the big back door was completely open, there was no drapes on it.

And here he sees his skeletal looking, sickly looking hairless, and the case of police was hairless as well, creature on down on all fours with glowing yellow eyes, staring right into his face from 10 feet away, that moved around the side of the house and was gone. And these are the kind of things that you don’t hardly ever hear about. There are so many strange things going out there. I mean, I’m dealing with these cases basically almost every day for current and past reports. It’s just amazing what’s going on out there and people aren’t hearing it.

Jim:

Yeah, when we get back, I’m going to share a quick story from the same general part of the world and get Stan’s reaction to it, a family story, and we’ll be back on the Paranormal Podcast with the legendary Stan Gordon.

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Announcer:

If you love the Paranormal Podcast, be sure to check out Jim Harold’s Campfire where ordinary people share their extraordinary stories of ghosts, UFOs, cryptids, and terrifying encounters. Find it for free wherever you listen to this podcast. Tune into Jim Harold’s campfire today. Now we return to the Paranormal Podcast.

Jim:

We’re back on the Paranormal Podcast. Our guest is the legendary UFOlogist and bigfoot researcher Stan Gordon, and we’re so glad to have him on the show today and be certain to check out his most recent book, Creepy Cryptids, that’s a tongue twister, Creepy Cryptids and UFO Encounters of Pennsylvania, Bigfoot, Thunderbirds, mysteries of the Chestnut Ridge and more, case book four. So if I can speak Stan, I’m going to give you a story that came from my parents about circa 1970. And Jim here was but a little baby, and my dad hailed from the part of West Virginia very close to the Maryland border around a place called Blackwater Falls. He and my mom were visiting and they decided to let grandma and grandpa watch Little Jimmy, and they went off to, I guess you would call it a lover’s lane. I dunno what you would call it.

It was like this very deserted area. And as you know in that part of the country when it’s dark, it’s dark, there’s no street lights or anything like that. So they went to this very deserted area and they went to park and look at the stars, and I’m sure discussed the matters of the day among other things. And all of a sudden my dad said, the whole sky lit up and it lit up to such a point that it was the old school cars with the clocks with a hand on it, and he could read the hands on the clock, he could read the numbers on the speedometer, and it lasted for some time. I don’t know if it was 30 or 60 seconds, but it lasted for some time. It was just like daylight. Then he turns to his left and he saw what he termed as a man wearing a welding mask, holding his hands out, his handout, like in a, I don’t know, ‘halt who goes there’ kind of stance.

And then he decided at that point, let’s get out of here. So they proceeded to go quickly down this unpaved road, this country road, and then in my mom’s West Virginia accent. What they saw on the hill was Jimmy I saw some of the biggest birds I ever seen in my life, and they were talking about birds with multi-feet wingspans, huge wingspans. And they came home and they fully expected to see something in the news or read in the newspaper. The next few days, something had happened, never heard anything else of it. And years later, while doing this show, I’ve talked to people like Mike Cleland about owls and screen memories, and people like you about not only just one phenomena, but multiple phenomena in the same experience. And it just got me thinking about the kind of things that you’ve had in the same general part of the country. What are your thoughts?

Stan Gordon:

Well, I’ll tell you what, you couldn’t have brought this case up at a better time. This is the first I heard of it, but you just brought up several interesting elements, and I can tell you this is basically what I’m dealing with right now here, Western Pennsylvania and some other parts of the state, but southwest VA is very, very busy. Lemme try to explain. Again, it’s a very complex situation we’ve been dealing with for years and years. I get reports all year round every year in all kind of weather conditions. And as I’ve mentioned on many shows in past months, it would’ve been fall and winter of 2021 when things generally quiet down here in Pennsylvania, we began, however, to have an increase in close range, low level UFO incidents. And from that point on right through to last week, it has been pretty much just continuous reports of UFOs, Bigfoot, cryptids, other anomalies going on.

And then at times you’ll get a little low on reports. Well, things are quiet down a little more than normal, and then all of a sudden things get much more intriguing. So for example, we’ll start to get a series of interesting detailed UFO reports, but then we begin from widespread areas, a constant flow of all kinds of things being reported by the public. Now you’ve got to understand these people don’t know, didn’t know about these other reports or what’s going on in their area, and for most people, it’s the first time they’ve seen anything. So just like what’s going on now, we’re getting a lots of UFO activity. Some of this was on my website. People can go to it and take a look later and read about some of these cases.

Jim:

And Stan, real quick, given that website, we’ll give it to ’em again, but I just want to make sure, give them that website real quick.

Stan Gordon:

Yeah, it’s basically www dot Stan Gordon, g o r d o n dot info. stangordon.info.

Jim:

Okay. Okay, continue on. I just want to make sure to get that out there.

Stan Gordon:

Okay, thank you. So anyhow, so what’s been going on? We’re getting a lot of UFO activity. Some of this, again is daylight reports, so we’re getting the big cigar shaped things. We’ve had some pretty good low level triangular objects. And again, some of these are not just a case where we’re seeing three lights on a corner. Some of these are where the whole object is completely luminous. The whole thing is luminous, generally silent, fairly low level. Many of ’em are on treetop reports coming in, A lot of other reports, really amazing. And remind me to talk about this later if you want to go in more detail. I think this is one aspect of a lot of the UFO phenomena a lot of people are not aware of are these many reports we’re getting, especially in the last year of the small spheres of light, very low to the ground.

But what’s so amazing, last year when we had the biggest surge we’ve ever had historically, these cases where these things in daylight are coming up within feet of people. Over the years, I’ve had reports that these smaller objects, pacing vehicles, entering people’s homes and cars through open windows, we’ve had reports, all these things inside of people’s homes. It is just amazing these reports that are coming in. And again, it’s not just Pennsylvania. I’m hearing this from many other researchers as well. Some of the TV shows are beginning to show this, but also as I’ve talked about for years in certain areas of Pennsylvania, and again around the country where you have very active areas for Bigfoot sightings, many, both researchers and witnesses are seeing the strange spheres of light or other light phenomena in the same areas where there’s having a lot of bigfoot activity.

So you’ve got all these things going on, all these strange anomalies, all these strange creature reports more than just Bigfoot. We’re getting the Thunderbird sightings, these huge flying creature reports, which I believe you just mentioned there, something of large flying. It’s all just so amazing. And as I keep talking to my lectures, you’ve got all the, I could tell you over and over again, so many of the particulars of all these different categories of phenomena, I deal with all of them. A lot of ’em are even in the last couple years and even in recent months, some of these cases, you’ve got so many strange creature reports, it is impossible to have so many unknown creatures out there. However, at the same time, you’ve got so many credible people, you’d be amazed at the background of some people are reporting these things, and if people are seeing these things, you have so many credible people seeing them, you can’t eliminate and say it’s not happening.

The only thing that makes any sense is we’re dealing with something which nobody understands. For a lack of a better term, again, I’ll call it interdimensional, that at a certain conditions, these various type of entities, these objects that come in and out of our physical reality at times, they’ll leave evidence, there’s electromagnetic effects involved at times. They come and they go, they’re here and they’re gone. And I think that that is what we’re dealing with, not only in Pennsylvania, but around the world. And I said years ago, there’s more than one origin to the unknown category of the UFO mystery. Maybe a small percentage might be extraterrestrial, but I think again, more and more of these things have a physical and non-physical component to it. It’s all energy connected. And here’s the one pattern I found years ago: many close range, low level UFO sightings, and many encounters with Bigfoot and other cryptids occur in the vicinity of high energy sources. So many settings occur around power plants, high tension power lines, bodies of water, railroad tracks, gas lines, gas wells, radio, tv, cell phone communication towers. I have no doubt there’s an energy connection to a lot of these cases.

Jim:

That’s very interesting. Now, you talked about these spheres of light, and even on my Campfire show where people call in and they share their stories of strange things that have happened to them. I’ve had recently some of these accounts of spheres of light. One, which I’m not sure if we’ve aired yet, I think it’ll probably be airing in the next couple of weeks. Was one all about spheres of light in the woods, or maybe we just aired that one. I can’t recall. By the time folks hear this, it will be out. But the point is I’ve been even hearing more of that and spheres following people. Can you talk to us about that? Because that’s an interesting phenomenon.

Stan Gordon:

Oh yeah. Well, I think it’s one of the most interesting aspects of this mystery that hardly anybody is talking about. Again, you’re hearing a little more about it. I knew about these cases in 1960s. I’ve called them mini UFO cases for years. And over the years, more and more, I’ve talked about these in my books. I saw a connection again in 1973, for example, during that massive wave of bigfoot sightings, I wrote about, I think I told you, in the Silent Invasion book in great detail about some of these weird cases. There was an incident in September 27th, 1973 north of Pittsburgh, where there was two witnesses waiting for a friend to pick ’em up out in the country to see the seven, eight foot tall Bigfoot. with white hair running across the road, but in one of its hand, it is carrying a small glowing ball of light and it runs into the woods.

And a few minutes later, this large object came across the sky and projected a beam of light down into the woods where the creature ran into. So that’s been going on. But these small spheres of light, they’re amazing. I’ve learned a lot about them. Many of the cases I investigate have been in daylight, many of ’em at very, very close range. I’ll just give you an example of a couple of the incidents. In past years, we’ve had reports, these things actually on the ground in the last two years, in daylight. But anyhow, so April 6th of ‘22. Now some of these are from Fayette County. I’m in Westmoreland County. A lot of these have occurred along the Chestnut Ridge. Again, this is a mountain range. It goes through Westmore, Fayette, Indiana County and Southwest PA extends to a few miles outside of Morgantown, West Virginia. So there have been sightings all along the ridge, but there are certain more specific locations where the phenomena seems to focus on.

And again, as I’ve noticed, people can have a sighting anywhere. We’re getting more and more reports and more populated areas as well. But there are certain areas where this phenomena, some has a long history of these things where all kinds of ongoing phenomena occurring similar to Skinwalker Ranch. So what I was dealing with in 72 and 73 was similar years before you heard about that in Utah, for example. But it’s ongoing now, not only in Pennsylvania, but many, many other states have locations reportedly where similar type of phenomena ongoing now. And we have one very active here in southwest PA. But anyhow, back to Fayette County, one of my research associates investigated some of these, Jim Brown, but this occurred, this was April 6th, 2022. This was afternoon, I think it was around three o’clock in the afternoon. And a man and his wife were out in their yard digging doing yard work when they see about 50 feet away, an object, about 10 feet above the fence line, about two feet in diameter, silver and circular, they thought at first was a Mylar balloon, but as it is gliding coming closer and closer to them, it’s getting brighter and brighter, and they realize that it’s not a balloon whatsoever.

And as it gets very close, suddenly it just basically exploded. There was a small lightning bolt that shot from the object to the ground. The sound was like a small firecracker, like a snap, like a spark that started a small fire in the field that they immediately put out. And anyhow, Jim was contacted. He got there within 45 minutes. If this had been a firecracker, if this had been a Mylar balloon exploding, there would’ve been residue everywhere. There was nothing whatsoever on the scene. So that was kind of interesting, but even more intriguing. And again, there had been many, many reports. Some of these are on my website. People can read about them. October last year. Okay, the first one would’ve been in Fayette County, and this was early morning hours, six o’clock in the morning, it was cold out. And anyhow, the man was in his pajamas, in his slippers, and he decided to go out to get his newspaper just been delivered.

And he told his wife, she found him sound asleep outside on the porch in the cold weather, which he’d never do. He told her dad, he was walking out towards the paper, the box where the paper was this small white sphere, I believe it was about a foot, foot and a half in diameter white sphere was hovering its face level between him and the box. And when he got close to it, he got so tired he couldn’t stay awake, and he fell asleep outside. So three days later, up in the Laurel Ridge, so you have the Chestnut Ridge, and then you have a little spacing, and then you have the Laurel Ridge also very active with all kinds of phenomena and cryptids and UFOs year after year. But anyhow, it’s 2:30 in the morning. This woman gets up 2:30 in the morning to go to the restroom.

She comes out of the bathroom five feet away in her living room. It’s just, I believe about a foot and a half diameter blue glow, blue sphere just hovering there. There’s like a mass moving around inside of this thing. She remembered taking one step towards, she said she felt like a slight electrical jolt, and she said she got so tired, she immediately went to bed. She said she felt terrible, felt sickly the next day, but she said, I’m an insomniac. I don’t fall asleep. She said, for me to fall asleep immediately after being near that thing, this is something that would never have been done. So he had two similar physiological effects reported within days of each other.

Jim:

Now, what do you think about the idea of there being a trickster element, essentially something that is just, for lack of a better phrase, they’re just messing with us?

Stan Gordon:

Well, I’ll tell you, there’s patterns to it, but there’s also a lot of, it just makes absolutely no sense at all. Why would it even happen? We just don’t understand. There’s a lot of strange reports. Like I said, I think it’s all energy connected somehow. As strange as it sounds, again, there’s a lot more to the Bigfoot mystery a lot of people have never heard of. For example, sometimes when you have these outbreaks in a certain geographical location, would go on sometimes weeks and months or longer. Besides Bigfoot, you get other cryptids. One of them are black panther reports. So we’re not talking now about mountain lions or cougars. That’s another whole story. We’re talking about. Jaguars, leopards, animals not common this part of the world. People who’ve been seeing ’em around here for years and years, and not just in Pennsylvania, many other parts of the country where they should not exist, but sometimes when you have this outbreak, you’ll get an outbreak of other cryptids or out of place animals, such as black panther reports. I told you about the story about the disappearing Bigfoot. Well, now let me tell you about a case that shows a correlation with the black panther, if you have time to listen to it.

Jim:

Sure. Please tell us.

Stan Gordon:

Okay, so this is how my memory is today, February, 1983, way up in the mountains, early morning hours. It’s very cold. The guy’s coming home. His car’s overheating, pulls into his driveway, which is all lit, and he’s putting anti-freeze into the car. Minute or two later, he hears this loud growl behind him. He turns around and looks and about, I think it was about 20 feet away. Here’s this large black house cat sitting there just growling at him. So he didn’t throw anything too much of it because there’s out in the country, there’s cats all over the place. It goes back to putting more antifreeze in the car. A few minutes later, he hears a louder growl. He turns around to look and he can’t believe what he sees. That big house cat has now physically grown to twice its size. It’s sitting there growling, louder and louder at him.

So the guy throws his antifreeze can at it, and the thing snarls at him and turns around and starts walking outside up the outside where it’s all lit up. He runs into the house to grab his pistol. He comes out a few minutes later and he said, I couldn’t believe what I’m seeing. He said, now I’m seeing this big animal, but it looks like what I’ve seen in the zoo, like a big black panther with glowing yellow eyes staring at me and just growling at me. He said, I took a shot at it. I dunno if I hit it while I’m looking at it, it suddenly vanishes in front of me and it’s gone.

Jim:

Wow. Wow. What an account, what an account. Do you think that we can get to a solution on this? I mean, you’ve been investigating it for many decades. Is this something that we’re getting closer to the truth, do you think? Or we’re just kind of spinning our wheels?

Stan Gordon:

I think we’re learning more about it. Back in the seventies when all this is going on, there was a lot of well-known Bigfoot people back then. A lot of ’em have passed away. A lot of the people I’ve been involved with have passed away now too unfortunately. We have younger groups and there’s some good researchers out there that I’m in touch with that do a lot of field work and remind me, I’ll tell you about some of the more recent sites. But anyhow, back in the seventies when all these strange things were coming up, I was in contact with people in the United States and now the country, and I found that 1. a lot of other researchers at the time knew about these kinds of cases, but they didn’t want to talk about it. They were afraid to write about it. They were afraid they would get laughed at by their colleagues.

My position was, look, this is well-documented. I don’t have the answers. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m putting it out there because maybe we can get more information. And now, after so many years, in the last few years, if you listened to some of the Bigfoot shows, you listen to some of the podcasts, you’re hearing more and more researchers now witnesses talking about similar phenomena going on. This stuff is going on all over the country and around the world. Very similar stuff. I mean, when I was down with you down there at the Monster Fest in Ohio and I had a chance to spend hours with other research from around the country, it was amazing to hear the investigation of what they’ve been finding similar, what I’ve been finding here with the balls of light changing into other life forms, other creatures, creatures changing into creatures.

It is so ridiculously crazy that it’s hard for people to accept. It’s hard for me to accept, but when I deal with so many credible people over so many years, I mean, I’ve sat there with hunters, guys back in the woods for years and years, and I’m sitting there and they have tears coming out of their eyes. I mean, these are guys that never believed that Bigfoot or other creatures could exist until they saw one. Their lives were changed, and a lot of, some of these people I’m still in touch with from years ago, they’ve never been the same since. And then I’ve interviewed people in recent weeks who have seen things that are just incredible. You hear about Dogman reports. I have people, I swear they’ve seen pterodactyls, even recently. I mean, again, you can’t have all these strange creature reports, but at the same time, you cannot dismiss them because so many summary reports are coming in from credible research or witnesses from all over the country.

Jim:

Now, in terms of, you were talking about some of the current sightings as we were wrap up, can you give us one more sighting, one of your favorites, a recent one?

Stan Gordon:

Oh my gosh, there are so many. Well, I’ll just tell you this. In May of this year, up in Fayette County, I think it was around 11:00 PM, my friend Jim went up to investigate this farmer up in the country out there. He had cattle. Something was scaring the cattle, and he figured it was a coyote. He said, he grabs his rifle and he walks outside and in the mud, in the cattle, he said, there’s this eight foot tall hairy man standing there with the cattle. He fired over his head, and I don’t recommend people shooting these things that people have over the years. He fired over his head, just scared away, and it ran off into the woods. All the cattle were intact. Jim was there I believe the next day, if there was any tracks, it was all stamped in the mud from the cattle. They found no tracks, but that’s the area where there’ve been sightings for years and years.

Just this past, well, a week ago Wednesday, a week ago today, up on the Chestnut Ridge on the Derry side of the ridge, which is one of the most active areas in the country, this person’s walking two dogs in the afternoon. Her one big dog suddenly stops, staring at the woods, and begins growling, and the person tried to settle the dog down because the dog generally doesn’t act like that, and it kept staring in the woods, and she looked in the woods about 40 feet away or so. I was up there this past weekend investigating, she sees this creature, it’s cover with, she said, dark brown or black hair, at least seven foot tall with long arms behind the tree. And she said, I didn’t even stop to look anymore. Said, I was so frightened I took my dogs and got out of there, but that’s just what’s going on.

I can tell you in the last several weeks, there have been a number of very detailed close range Bigfoot sightings, not only in Southwest VA, but even in other parts of the state, which is very interesting. Again, because it’s not like ‘73, we get sporadic reports, but for us to get the kind of reports that are coming in from widespread areas, detailed reports of everything from a dogman sighting to Thunderbird sightings to Bigfoot sightings in daylight to UFOs, cities, balls of light to all kind of mystery boom reports we’re getting from different areas, all kind of weird things are going on right now, and it’s, there’s a pattern to it. It seems like when these things outbreak all kinds of phenomena’s taking place, and it’s something a lot of people just don’t understand, none of us understand it, but it’s ongoing and there’s something going on right now.

Jim:

Indeed. Well, Stan Gordon, it’s been great to speak with you. Again, thank you for being generous with your time and insight and stories and research. Where can people go to find the book and everything you do?

Stan Gordon:

Okay, well, they can go to my website and look up reports and events where I’ll be speaking at. That’s Stangordon.info. All my books are available on amazon.com and barnes noble.com. The newest book, like I said, is Creepy Cryptids and Strange UFO Encounters of Pennsylvania. The other book, it’s very popular about that massive UFO of Bigfoot wave. We didn’t even get a chance to even get into it. It’s called Solid Invasion, the Pennsylvania UFO/Bigfoot casebook. There is this mind blowing incidents in both books. If you’re interested in UFOs and Bigfoot and Cryptids and the paranormal, it’s amazing stuff. My other books are Really Mysterious Pennsylvania and Astonishing Counters. They all have all different reports in, there’s a lot of very detailed cases that most people never heard of before.

Jim:

Stan Gordon, thank you so much for joining us today on the Paranormal Podcast.

Stan Gordon:

Thanks for having me on.

Jim:

Stan Gordon, always very interesting to listen to. I got to meet with him over the summer at the great Monster Fest event in Ohio, and it was a great time. A quick note, another great time will be Friday, October 6th. If you’re hearing this before then. That evening, I will be at the Kent stage in Kent, Ohio for something called Webcast: A Night with Paranormal Podcasts, and it’ll be myself, Greg and Dana Newkirk from the Haunted Objects podcast, and of course, Hellier and ****** from ***** will be there as well. It will be a night with paranormal podcasts. They’re calling it webcast, and that is on Friday, October 6th, the evening. So if you’re hearing it before then and you’re within driving distance of Kent, Ohio, I hope to see you there. You can get all the details at kentstage.org. That’s kentstage.org. And now we are going to talk with Nick Redfern about Werewolves and Mothman right after this.

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Follow Jim on Twitter and Instagram @theJimHarold, and join our virtual campfire Facebook group at virtualcampfiregroup.com. Now, back to the Paranormal Podcast.

Jim:

There are certain people, and we’ve done this show now for 18 years, who keep coming up time and time again, and that’s because they are very good at what they do, and we really enjoy having them on, and the audience enjoys them very much. Front and center in that category is Nick Redfern. If you don’t recognize the name, where have you been? Nick has done over 90 books in the area of Fortiana, and we’re so glad to talk to him today about two of his newest ones. He’s so prolific, he doesn’t come on the show and talk about one book he talks about multiples, and the first book that we’re going to talk about is Werewolf Stories, Shape Shifters, Lycanthropes, and Man Beasts. And it’s by Nick Redfern, also with the contributions of the late great Brad Steiger. And we’ll talk about that. And then he also, Nick has another very interesting book out, Mothman and Other Flying Monsters: Nuclear Nightmares and Armageddon. And we’re so glad to have Nick Redfern back on the show. I mean, the bio speaks for itself over 90 books. He’s been on multiple television series. He’s a very popular speaker on the conference circuit. He kind of does it all and does it all very well. We’re so glad to speak with him again. Nick, welcome back to the show.

Nick Redfern:

Hey, Jim, how’s it going?

Jim:

It’s going well. It’s going particularly well when I get to talk to Nick Redfern. Now, Nick, on this Werewolf Stories book. I know, and I think we, I may actually interviewed Brad about the original go round of this 10 or 15 years ago, but this is Nick Redfern and Brad Steiger. So can you talk to us about how that came about and what it means to you to kind of help continue the legacy of the great Brad Steiger?

Nick Redfern:

Well, I mean, Brad was a great guy. It’s a pity that he died, but he did have a long life and he sort of lived his life. You know. But he was someone who was fascinated by the whole issue of werewolves, wolf men, things like that. And as they’re known as today, like the dogmen, some people will say, well, these are all different separate entities, but they’re not really, you look at them, like the beast of Bray Road, for example. Pretty much all of them are, I would say something that is not separate, but has a connection somehow, DNA wise. But what’s intriguing about some of these creatures is that they seem to have supernatural sort of skills, if you like. And so we’re not just talking about unknown animals alone. You’ve got this other side as well, which sort of puts it in a completely different packet, if you like.

Jim:

Now, something that caught my attention is in the introduction you talk about you even had your own experience back in the early two thousands, didn’t you?

Nick Redfern:

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Jim:

Tell us a little bit about that if you would.

Nick Redfern:

Okay, yeah, sure. Well, this happened in 2003, so we’re talking about 20 years ago now. And I was on vacation and had gone to bed. And when I went to bed, it was round about, I would say three in the morning, something like that. And I woke up, well, first I heard some shuffling in the bedroom, and as I said, about 3:00 AM and when I woke up, I realized I couldn’t move at all. And this is like sleep pa–, well, it is, it’s sleep paralysis, this sort of terrifying situation where people very often in the dead of night wake up, they’re unable to move, and there’s always a strange, terrible creature looming over them in the bedroom. And it becomes very, very difficult to try and stop the situation. Now, the reason why I wrote about this and talked about it is because for mine, everybody has, shall we say, an unknown creature on the bed of some way. And when I managed to slightly make the break, I could see this creature. It was cloaked in a huge cloak, but its face and its head looked like a German shepherd.And it was standing right in front of me, but I could see it about 20 seconds prior to that when I was going down the, I could see this thing coming down the corridor.

And when that happened, and again and again, I tried and tried, this was over the course of only about five minutes. It wasn’t like a gigantic situation, but I could see it getting closer and closer. And what was the most sinister thing was its vocalization. I would say it was like a cross between a human language. And if you say something like a tiger or a lion with a growl like that, and so if you imagine you could grow, you could growl, see the thing growling. But that growl seemed to have actually some kind of vocalization and which meant intelligence as well. And eventually I made the way to get out of all this. And what I did, I just sort of pulled myself very carefully and grabbed onto one side of the bed and sort of pulled myself, and then the creature was gone.

Now that situation, sleep paralysis, I mean, that’s been going forever pretty much. I mean, there are stories like that, for example, Lilith and Adam and Eve, things like that. And there’s amazing stories and creatures that appear in people’s bedrooms, rooms in the dead of night. And thankfully I was able to break it. But the reason why I mentioned that in the book and spoke about it to other people is because when you’ve got an upright creature with a face like a German shepherd and looks somewhat human in its position and so on, then you start to think, well, are we talking about werewolves? And to some degree, I think that is exactly what was happening.

Jim:

Do you think that maybe it came to you because of your line of work?

Nick Redfern:

I’m not really sure, but I think the problem with some of these stories, the phenomenon is so sort of bizarre and strange. It’s really difficult to try and find a way to get out of it and what the modus operandi is and what they are. So what I would say is that we’re still living in a mystery. I mean, there’s all different ones around the world with different names, the most famous one being the old hag in Newfoundland. And so they’re all over the place. And certainly to me, these are real entities, but what they are and where they come from, I sometimes wonder if they have the ability to actually move into different realms and perhaps even come through the walls at 2:00 AM in the morning. So there’s a lot of paranormal and occult and supernatural tied in with what is basically seen as cryptozoology. But cryptozoology now is in some respects, sort of crossing over a little bit with the paranormal as well.

Jim:

Now in the book, one of the favorites I think of cryptozoologists these days, people are fascinated by this, the idea of chupacabra. But it seems to be that different people describe chupacabra as different things. Some people think it’s like something that looks like a mangy dog. Other people describe it as it is. Here in the book, eyewitnesses have described chupacabra standing erect on powerful goat like legs with three clawed feet. So Nick Redfern, clarify for us exactly what is a chupacabra?

Nick Redfern:

Well, it depends who you ask and where and when,

Jim:

Like so many other things in life.

Nick Redfern:

Yeah. Well, if you look at the, say for example, the Texas Chupacabra or the United States Chupacabra, that does look like a large dog-like creature, and it has the pointed ears, the large German Shepherd muzzle, that kind of thing. Now, that’s the imagery we get in the United States, but mainly in Texas. And actually if you see some of the pictures, some of these creatures can actually stand on their back legs to move around and bounce around. And so you could easily see how somebody might mirror that with what I saw, except for the fact what most people don’t see is like a large cloak. You don’t see that very often. However, now the original Chupacabra, the one that came out of Puerto Rico in the 1990s, now that one is also similar because although the differences of the two Chupacabras, Puerto Rico and the USA, the other angle is that both of them can rise up on their back legs.

And I’ve spoken to people over the years who’ve said that they’ve seen, I mean sort of big, really muscular animals, and to a big degree, they had the ability to not only just run on their back legs, but its speed. And several people have told me they’ve seen the US Chupacabra running at 30 miles an hour. Now, if that’s true, I mean that would be absolutely incredible. And also with a tendency to running as well. So we are looking at something or slightly different things, but they are all kind of somehow tied to various aspects of all this.

Jim:

Now, I think a lot of people, when they think of Wolfman or werewolves, they think of that famous movie from the 1940s, the Wolfman with Lon Cheney, Jr. now turning into a Wolfman, can you talk about werewolves themselves and how far back that idea of the shapeshifting ability from human to monster, how far back does that go?

Nick Redfern:

Well, I mean, that’s an interesting phenomenon because the vast majority of people who talk about werewolves, most people have never really said they saw a human change into a werewolf and a werewolf to a human. There are actually not very many stories. Now, the only stories which fall into that category are the ones that you can find in say the 1600s, the 1700s, that sort of era. Maybe sometime the 1800s as well. So in that case, we do have those reports, but those where they actually mutate, you don’t see many really, it’s just sort of like another aspect of it, however, but I remember that Linda Godfrey, who was one of the best researchers into this, she said that she had seen people only on a few times, but she’d come up with several stories from people who’d approached her. And she said that they told her that they looked normal and they had no clothes.

They were naked and they were in the woods. And at one point, not too far from Bray Road, one of the people was seen bounding across the fields. And one of the guys who was watching this animal said that he could see this creature or man or man creature. What happened was that the entity charged across again at about 30, 35 miles an hour racing across this field, but the man’s sworel that he could see the creature’s face was slowly changing into a German shepherd’s face, and it was going along in seconds. It was mutating, if you like. So yes, there are a few cases of classic examples of humans changing to werewolves and werewolves to the other way. And so we do what we can, but a lot of these stories are sort of bizarre. We’ve got the occult, the paranormal, we’ve got shape shifting, and we’ve got creatures which can run at super speeds. And they certainly,  put it this way. They’re certainly not normal animals.

Jim:

Is there one creature in this book that stands out for you? I don’t want to say maybe it’s your favorite or you think the one that’s most striking, one creature that really stands out?

Nick Redfern:

Well, I would say what is known today as the Dogman, because they seem to be the most dangerous ones. You want to keep away from them. Now, I did say earlier there are different types, but in saying that, the dogmen are really, really dangerous, and although you should keep away from them, for me, this is sort like an incredible creature and muscular, large. And we’re talking about, one guy even said he saw something that looked like the dog man, but it was about the size of a cow. And again, another case, which is like, wow.

So for me, the Dogman phenomenon is the most intriguing. The reason why I say that, because if you look at the dogmen stories against the other ones, you’ll see a lot more cases of, as I said, this strange language, which is crossed over with just something screaming and what seemed to be a combination of human and animals talking to each other. And so for me, I think the Dogman thing is the most fascinating because of its sheer size, its abilities, the fact that they seem to be extremely dangerous and keep away from them. But if you’re going to go out there for the answers, well, you have to get out there.

Jim:

Well, it is a fascinating topic, Werewolf stories, Shapeshifters, Lycanthropes and Man Beasts. And Nick, I’m assuming that folks can pick up this book anywhere. They get fine books, correct?

Nick Redfern:

Yes. Anywhere. Really? Yep. All good stores. Kindle, Amazon, just about everywhere, really. It’s everywhere.

Jim:

Yeah. I highly recommend that people check it out. Visible Link always does such a nice job. This is over 400 pages. It has some great artwork in it and the cover, and you get to read Nick’s work and also the work of the great Brad Steiger, our guest is the prolific author Nick Redfern. He is busy, and in part one, we talked about werewolf stories, and when I was talking offline with Nick, he made the point that there’s a good connection with this next book. We’re going to talk about his other new book, it’s called Mothman and Other Flying Monsters: Nuclear Nightmares, and Armageddon. Nick, why did you decide to turn your attention to Moth? Man?

Nick Redfern:

Well, I’ll tell you. I’ll explain it to you, and it’s a fascinating, but also a disturbing story. If you remember back in 1966, 1967, when in Point Pleasant West Virginia and the Mothman was seen, this gargoyle type animal going through the sky with these fiery red eyes. We all know the story and the look of Mothman, and now Mothman was seen from 1966 to 1967, and although a lot of people don’t realize that over the years, the creatures, Mothman or creatures like him, are still seen flown around the area, and people still talk about them now, but the numbers and sightings were certainly nowhere like it was in the 1960s. However, in 2020, 21, something like that, more and more people began to see these creatures like Mothman again. There was all over the United States, and of course when I sort of write a book and tell people about things like this, somebody will say, oh, I’ve heard about that.

People very, just sort of pushed them on. And what happens is more and more people hear about all these stories, new stories about Mothman, and over the last five years or so, and pretty much nonstop, there’ve been sightings of Mothman predominantly in the United States, but not completely. And what we’ve got is a situation where instead of having a tragic disaster at the bridge, what people are seeing now is images of Mothman with the red eyes and behind him, like a gigantic atomic bomb going off, a mushroom cloud, mushroom cloud. And so it seems to be in a simplistic type, it’s a case of Mothman taking on a new version of Mothman.

And the sheer number of reports I’ve got now about so many people seeing these in the sky, usually again, sort of the early hours, sort of 2:00 AM, 3:00 AM, something like that. And people usually, again, they’re not able to get out the bed. And what they can see though is the image of the Mushroom cloud, radioactive mushroom cloud and Mothman sort of circling around. So when you look into all this, what we see is an upgraded version of Mothman, nothing like the 1960s. Looks different, much more sleek, and the eyes seem to be even brighter if such a thing could have happened from the original one.

And the more I’ve looked into this, the more I’ve been finding these cases, and when you find out that there are people all across the country and other people didn’t know the others, but they were having exactly the same dreams. And so as I see it, we’ve got a new Mothman or an upgraded one on, and I’m also placing Mothman in this category that relates to the future. I mean, that’s, for example, one of the most fascinating things is the Mothman Prophecies. Now, the Mothman Prophecies, it was called prophecies for a very good reason. And that reason was that people in Point Pleasant were actually seeing and hearing and having mysterious noises in their minds. And when they would go to bed and go to sleep, they would have these horrible dreams about the Silver Bridge falling into the water, which is where Mothman was.

Now, we are not seeing something like people drowning now in the dreams, it’s about nuclear war, which is very disturbing, but that’s what people are saying. So that again, sort of demonstrates an apocalyptic system. But when you look further into it, you see again, all of these angles that relate to unfortunately like a World War III. Now, I would say to people who might read the book, but now sometimes a prophecy does come true, sometimes a prophecy doesn’t. So it doesn’t mean that a really bad situation is always going to work. It doesn’t. So maybe we should just stay on the good side, but yes, there’s no doubt that there’s been the original Mothman and now we’ve got this new one, and he’s even worse, shall we say.

Jim:

Now, let me ask you this. Is it possible, and this could go for the situation in the sixties and the Silver Bridge collapse as to today, is it possible that not that people are imagining this, but they’re actually generating it like a tulpa, and that for some reason, some tragedy is on their mind, some future tragedy like the Silver Bridge collapse in the sixties or a potential nuclear war in the future? Is it possible somehow this is on their minds, they’re tapping into it and they’re generating these mothmen?

Nick Redfern:

Yeah, I’m glad you actually mentioned that, Jim, because I do talk about tulpas in the book just because we are getting this imagery and lots of other people know about it as well. You could see how people could subconsciously sort of realize something’s going on and they’re thinking it’s real. But yeah, you’re right. It could be just like a tulpa, a thought form, and people are getting more and more worried and frightened of that imagery. And it continues and it continues, but if enough people are coming up with the fear of that imagery, it would be easy to create something out of somebody’s imagination and nothing’s going to happen.

Jim:

Right. It’s interesting, the whole category of tulpas, and I’ve even talked to people on my Campfire show about that. Not that they’re imagining things per se, but maybe somehow they have actually generated something that’s real. And I think that’s always a fascinating possibility. Now, Keel, in talking about the trickster element, is there any possibility that this is a colossal joke that someone or something is just messing with us and trying to create this air of high strangeness with these odd creatures, and they’re just basically having fun at our expense, terrifying us with these mothmen?

Nick Redfern:

Well, yes. I mean, when we hear of the trickster, it sounds like it’s really nice and cool and cuddly, but that’s totally wrong. The trickster can be an extremely dangerous entity. It’ll just sort of put you in a situation where you are screaming, paranoid and so on, all because of the trickster, which sounds like a little rabbit playing around with them.

Jim:

Yeah, but I think of things like, and you mentioned in the book, the Djinn.

Nick Redfern:

Well, yes, the Middle East Djinn. I mean, again, that’s sort of one as well that falls into the category of the trickster. And a lot of people have looked into the whole phenomenon of that and how they can change their appearance, how they look, even changing to different animals. And very often like black dogs and giant cats and all sorts of animals can be changed and vice versa. And so for me, we have to be very careful when we’re talking about tricksters, the djinn, where they are in some ways, sometimes they are just simply playful, and I do mean playful, but sometimes on the other side, they can be extremely dangerous and deadly. I would say.

Jim:

One thing you talk about in the book are strange and weird phone calls and Men in Black appearances. I know you’ve done books on Men in Black also, so folks, there’s plenty. If you’re interested in Fortiana and the supernatural and just strange stuff, look back at all of Nick’s great books over the years, 90 plus, you’ll find a lot of stuff there. But can you talk to us a little bit about weird phone calls and Men in Black?

Nick Redfern:

Yeah, that’s a really strange phenomenon because whenever there are the Men in Black, there are weird phone calls. For example, if you’ve seen, you’ve seen a UFO and then late one night you hear a slow bang on the front door and you open the door and you see two or three guys in black suits, tight black suits, and even wearing the old style 1940s hats. And the fascinating thing about this is that they threaten people who’ve just seen a UFO and ‘you will not talk about this.’ And people get so terrified that usually they do walk away or run away.

And that still happens today. People still see the Men in Black today, and people still have this issue of strange phone calls; people, let’s say, dead of the night and if the phone goes off, let’s say one or 2:00 AM in the morning, I mean, you’re going to jump up and see what’s happening because you’re worried maybe there’s been an accident or something, that kind of thing. But it’s not really like that. It’s more of a trickster thing. Again, a way to get somebody, get them out of the bed this time and have them get frightened and terrified and have the Men in Black in the shadows and the person runs into the house and goes to call the police and doesn’t have the ability to do that. Because again, that there’s all sort of weird, a static on the phone. And again, I think a lot of this is done just to cause people to be put in a situation that is so terrifying, and we don’t really know if there is a connection between with other entities as well.

But what we are seeing is certain times and certain places where say for example, you’ll have the djinn here, you’ve got a shapeshifter there, you’ve got the trickster. And I am inclined to think they are all from different parts. But in saying that, I mean also I’ve wondered if when you’ve got the, for example, any of these creatures, these shapeshifters, I think, and having this trickster angle as well, then we are seeing something that works. I would say in a theme, this isn’t chaotic, it’s done as a means and a ways to sort of target people and maybe they attack certain people. Because I think one of the things, for example, I know that a lot of people who’ve looked into the djinnphenomenon, a lot of people backed away from it all because everything started to go wrong in their lives. And I pretty much did that and then stopped after this book. I’m not joking,

Jim:

I’m not joking either, because even I had an experience, and I shouldn’t say it, but I will say it, Rosemary Ellen Guiley, who along with you and Brad are some of my all time favorite authors in this area, she did a book on the djinn and did an interview with her later that night. I got a call that my uncle died who was a second uncle to me. I mean, it’s not a second uncle, a second dad. And again, he had been ill, but I don’t think any of us thought he was in immediate danger of dying. So he died. Well, that would be enough of a coincidence. Two weeks later, totally out of the blue, my mom dies. And just like euch, every book I get of yours, I don’t keep all the books I get because I couldn’t possibly, I wouldn’t have any room. But over the last 18 years, every book I get from Nick Redfern, every book I got from Brad Steiger, every book I got from Rosemary Ellen Guiley I kept, except for one, the djinn book I threw in a garbage. So again, so careful, could have been a coincidence. Didn’t want to find out.

Nick Redfern:

Well, I guess. But from my perspective, I think everything that I’ve sort of written about in the book, I think is interconnected. I think what we’re seeing are the trickster phenomenon. We’re seeing these entities which can become extremely dangerous and they like to get dangerous as well. And one of the most creepiest aspect of all is that a lot of people believe that they’ve had their minds not just washed, but people were thinking, hang on a minute, they’re speaking in my mind and I’m speaking in their minds. And a very, very strange situation, the djinn is saying, you will not do this or you will do this because the djinn is supposed to be a creature that has the ability to get into the human mind. And so there’s so many things like this that we have to be very careful of. And I think that is exactly the same with Mothman. I mean, you think about it, 1966, 1967, we had Mothman. And what happens then right after that, just not long after dozens of people are killed in the Silver Bridge and drowned. And I don’t think this was a coincidence. I think we have to be really careful with these creatures because I won’t say they’ll kill, but they certainly like to mess around with people and sort of push them around here and there just because as they see it, it’s fun, almost.

Jim:

Yeah, it’s a mind bender for sure. And one thing I know is I don’t necessarily want to run into Mothman. I’d rather read about it in Nick Redfern’s book, Mothman and Other Flying Monsters: Nuclear Nightmares, and Armageddon. Nick, where can people find this book?

Nick Redfern:

Okay, Amazon, all good bookstores everywhere. And I have Kindle and just about anywhere you can find a book, you’ll see it.

Jim:

Excellent. It is Mothman and Other Flying Monsters, Nuclear Nightmares in Armageddon. And don’t forget the first book we talked about in the show today, Werewolf Stories, Shapeshifters, I can’t say it today. Shapeshifters, Lycanthropes, and Man Beast by Nick Redfern and Brad Steiger. Nick, thank you for joining us today on the program.

Nick Redfern:

Alright, thanks a lot, Jim.

Jim:

Thank you for tuning into this super-sized edition of the Paranormal Podcast. And thanks to both Nick and Stan, great gentlemen, great experts in their field and always fascinating to speak with. And just two great guests to have anytime of the year. And we thank you for tuning in. And as a thank you, we want to give you something special. So if you would be interested in a free mini ebook to the Campfire, some of our favorite all time Campfire stories, just go to my website, jimharold.com, that’s jimharold.com, and click on the orange button at the top of the page. We would appreciate it very much. And then you will be able to sign up for a free mini ebook. We think it’s a pretty cool deal. So check it out jim harrell.com. We also are selling some special merch for the season, Jimharold.com/merch, Jimharold.com/merch, and we would appreciate you looking into that as well. We thank you so much for tuning in today. We appreciate it. I hope you have a happy and healthy Halloween season. Share the shows. Stay safe and stay spooky. Thanks so much. Bye-bye.

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