Interview with Lyle Blackburn

Brought to you by Anomalist books.

1. What made you decide to pursue the Bishopville, South Carolina Lizardman for your 2nd book entitled Lizard Man: The True Story of the Bishopville Monster?

I was doing research on monster sightings that have occurred in various swamps locations around the southeast U.S. In the process I actually visited swamps in several different states, including Scape Ore Swamp near Bishopville, South Carolina. As I interviewed people in the area, including law officials and witnesses, I realized there was much more to the story of the Bishopville Lizard Man than had ever been made public. It seemed like a great story, so I ended up developing it into a book.

2. Could you share some of the odd going ons regarding Lizardman festivities in Bishopville?

At this point the Lizard Man is sort of a cultural icon that many people in the area recognize. There's a few restaurants that incorporate the Lizard Man into their identity and there's a display at the Cotton Museum in Bishopville. Bishopville also has a Cotton Festival each year and their mascot is the "Lizard Man." It's kind of a fun thing now, but when it started, there were some incredible and downright spooky sightings of the creature.

Strange lights appeared over Fayetteville, North Carolina on November 8, 2013. At first there seemed to be one stationary light from an unknown source in the sky, then two more appeared and the three lights moved in formation.

The YouTube uploader described it as: "[at] first look[ing] like [a] comet falling from [the] sky, then lights appeared in formation."

Mysterious stringy filaments seen falling from the sky have mystified residents and authorities in the Drôme and Ardèche.

Reports of the fibres were first raised on Thursday, but no one has yet been able to identify what they are - giving rise to theories that they are the by-product of plane exhausts.

Some website are already speculating that the fibres are proof behind a conspiracy theory that "chemtrail", contrails from planes that take a long time to disperse, are deliberately injecting chemicals into the atmosphere to spread disease and kill the sick and infirm.

Others have offered suggestions from spiders' webs to 'Angel hair', believed by followers of Raëlism to be made by UFOs passing through the atmosphere.

The prefecture for the Drôme said it did not know what the fibres were but said it was not worried and would not be sending them for analysis.

The Commission de Recherche et d'Information Indépendantes sur la Radioactivité has said there is no concern about radioactivity from the fibres.

A dog owner claims her best friend has supernatural abilities and has warned her of impending disaster.

Daisy, a four-year-old cockerpoo - a cocker spaniel crossed with a poodle - started showing her "psychic talents" when she was involved in a crash in Worcester.

Owner Judy Owen said she was acting very out of character when it happened in February.

"It all started when I was going up Deansway and she began to howl, which is very unlike her, and getting very agitated," she said.

"I shouted at her to sit and calm down and three minutes later this guy came up behind me and smashed into the back of me, sending me headlong into a wall and wrote my car off."

The second incident did not happen until months later when, in the early hours of the morning, Daisy woke up and became almost impossible to calm down.

"On the night of Sunday, October 27, we went to bed as normal. However, at 4am she suddenly awoke and began rushing around my apartment - nothing seemed to quieten her," Ms Owen said.

"After about half an hour I persuaded her to come back into the bedroom where she jumped up on the bed and lay horizontally next to me, pushing her little body against mine.

Police launch murder investigation after bones belonging to at least four people are discovered on sea bed near Antibes.

The macabre discovery of human bones on the sea bed off the French Riviera, near the millionaires' playground of Antibes, has baffled investigators and prompted a murder inquiry.

The remains, which appear to come from at least four individuals, include a skull on which detectives discovered the faded inscription "death to paedophiles".

Investigators say the remains, discovered by a diver six metres beneath the surface near the foot of a rock cliff at Cap d'Antibes, south-west of Nice, have been in the water for at least a decade.

DNA tests on one of the other bones, a humerus, have revealed the detached upper arm belonged to a 17-year-old Parisien, Stéphane Hirson, who disappeared in 1994.

The remains - a femur, or thigh bone, from a male; one male and one female humerus; a skull and a part of a jaw - were first spotted by a diver looking for sea urchins in February this year.

The truth is out there for a young Townsville doctor-in-training who believes he has photographic evidence of a UFO chasing a large flock of birds.

James Cook University medical student Joshua Thompson, 20, was driving to his home at Riverside Gardens in Douglas on Tuesday about 6pm when he spotted thousands of small black birds flying over the Ross River towards the Palmetum gardens, as he went past the bridge.

"I've never seen anything like that before in Townsville," he said.

"I thought that looked a bit cool."

He took a photograph on his iPhone 5 and, when later examining the picture, he noticed two strange, small saucer-shaped objects in the sky.

In one of the photos, there is a clear burst of yellow light in the shape of a disc, with six small lights in the sky.

"The six small lights really weirded me out," he said.

"You can see them really clearly in this ring type of thing."

There also appears to be a black shadow behind the unknown object, and another object above it, seemingly flying away.

The Humane Society of the United States is now offering a reward of up to $5,000 for information regarding a series of brutal sheep mutilations in Port Lavaca.

The Calhoun County Sheriff's Department has also been offering up to $2,500 from a private donor for any information regarding the sheep mutilations.

Wayne and Karen Daggs, of Port Lavaca, have lost 21 of their prized Barbado sheep since July. Calhoun County sheriffs had been involved since the beginning of Daggs' sheep killings. Even a local UFO investigator has weighed in on the incidents, adding an extra bit of weirdness to the story.

The last reported mutilations occurred at the beginning of October.

"The mutilation and torture of so many defenseless sheep is a real life horror story and a shocking act of violence within this community, said Katie Jarl, the HSUS state director in a press release. "We are hopeful that this reward will bring forward anyone with information about this heinous crime." Daggs put the cost of the animals he's lost at around $1,250.

Bobbie Vickery, with Calhoun County, says the Daggses lost a sheep on October 17 to a bobcat. The sheep was found with wounds not like the wounds found on the other mutilated sheep.

The HSUS hopes that the money will lead to the identification, arrest and conviction of the person or people responsible for the killings. They see a connection between animal cruelty and human violence, pointing to studies showing a correlation between animal cruelty and all manner of other crimes.

The HSUS recently doubled its standard cruelty reward from $2,500 to $5,000, with the money coming from a donation by a HSUS board member.

A video posted on YouTube claims to show a Bigfoot lurking in the woodland that runs alongside the Trans-Canada highway in British Columbia.

The clip, which has been viewed over 30,000 times, appears to capture a mysterious hairy beast moving among the trees in the west Canada state - although curiously, the creature can only be seen from one angle.

The video, which was uploaded by self-proclaimed "paranormal researcher" Wowforreeel, takes the form of several screen-grabs from Google's interactive mapping programme Google Earth.

As the uploader zooms in on the woodland running alongside Canada's longest national highway, a shadowy creature appears to emerge between the trees.

Ghosts, ghouls and all manner of paranormal activity reside on our spooky isles. So, where should you visit if you to want to see a ghostly apparition?

It's that time of year again, when the ghosts, ghouls and assorted paranormal beasties and fiends rise up to menace us.

But where should you visit if you're daring enough to want to see a ghostly apparition? While researching this list of 20 of Britain's spookiest and most haunted places one name repeatedly appeared. The Village of Pluckley, Kent.

Pluckley, though it may sound charming, has a fearsome reputation for being the most haunted village in Britain, indeed it was recognised as such in the 1989 Guinness Book of World Records.

The village, in the Ashford district of Kent and close to the North Downs, reportedly has between 12 and 16 ghosts, including 'The Screaming Man', whose howls of agony are heard in the area of the village Brickworks and are reputed to come from the spirit of a man killed after a wall of clay fell on him.

Editor's Note: This story contains passages from newspaper reports 127 years ago that today might be offensive to some readers. The intent is to accurately reproduce the accounts from that time period.

Waterville - In the same month the Statue of Liberty was dedicated in New York in 1886, a handful of newspapers in New England published stories about a deadly encounter in the Maine woods involving what today likely would be termed "Bigfoot" or "Sasquatch."

The story of the 10-foot-tall "wild man" with 7-foot-long arms and hair growing all over his face and body was reported in broadsheets of the time after first gracing the pages of the Waterville Sentinel, a weekly paper that no longer exists. The Waterville Morning Sentinel was established 18 years later in 1904.

Tales of these seldom-seen, mysterious apelike beasts are found in Maine folklore, according to experts, but they are more prevalent in California, Washington and Oregon tales. Online searches yield hundreds of similar stories from around the globe.

The Maine story starts in early October 1886 when "an affrighted Frenchman from over the line" arrived in the Elm City to weave a frightening tale of woe, according to an excerpt from the Sentinel published in at least two other papers of the era, the Wilton Record and The Industrial Journal of Bangor.