My previous article was titled "..the 'others' are far more advanced than we are." It was focused on the work of a National Security Agency employee named Lambros Callimahos. He was a man who had a deep interest in the matter of extraterrestrial life and its implications for us - good, bad or somewhere in between. The article began as follows: "Of the many and various UFO / extraterrestrial-themed documents and papers that have surfaced under the terms of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, one of the more interesting ones is Communication with Extraterrestrial Intelligence. It was written back in the 1960s (specifically in 1965) by a man named Lambros D. Callimahos. He was a cryptologist with the National Security Agency. On September 23, 1965, Callimahos took part in a panel-style debate on the subject of his paper at a conference on military electronics in Washington, D.C."

It's worth noting that three years later, Callimahos wrote another paper on extraterrestrial life and UFOs. His 1968 paper was titled UFO Hypothesis and Survival Questions. He stated: "It is the purpose of this monograph to consider briefly some of the human survival implications suggested by the various principal hypotheses concerning the nature of the phenomena loosely categorized as 'UFO.' UFO Hypothesis and Survival Questions focuses its attention for the most part on five central issues: (a) All UFOs are hoaxes; (b) All UFOs are hallucinations; (c) All UFOs are natural phenomena; (d) Some UFOs are secret earth projects; and (e) Some UFOs are related to extra-terrestrial intelligence."

Few men are as revered in my home state of Texas as those who held off the mighty Mexican Army - led by the self-proclaimed "Napoleon of the West," dictator Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna - for 13 long days in the spring of 1836. The blood sacrifice of men like William Barrett Travis, James Bowie, James Bonham, and David Crockett bought precious time for General Sam Houston to train and prepare his ragtag troops for a final confrontation with what might have been the mightiest army in the Western Hemisphere. The tale of the defenders of the Alamo is as interesting as it is tragic, but that is not the story I want to share with you today. Instead, I want to share a little-known tale about arguably the most well-known of the Alamo freedom fighters: David Crockett. It is a story with which most Texans are not familiar, much less anyone outside the Lone Star State. As a matter of fact, it is a tale I had never heard until very recently. It is incredibly strange, but undeniably fascinating.

By the spring of 1835, lured by empresarios like Stephen F. Austin and Green DeWitt, more than 20,000 American settlers had migrated to Texas in search of cheap land and the promise of prosperity. Around this same time, David Crockett, who had served as both a Tennessee State Representative (1821-1823) and a U.S. Congressman (1827-1835) had declared himself done with politics and was pondering what to do with the next phase of his life. The allure of Texas proved too much for him to resist. On November 1, 1835, Crockett, his brother-in-law Abner Burgin, William Patton, and Lindsey K. Tinkle set out for Texas. It was at a stop along their trip - in Memphis, Tennessee - that Crockett uttered his famous line, "Since you have chosen to elect a man with a timber toe to succeed me, you may all go to hell and I will go to Texas."

Nearly thirty years ago John Keel, one of those self-styled UFO researchers that Ken Macdonald complained about in his June 2, 2018 AOL Newsribol article about Roswell, said that by the turn of the century (meaning in 2000), there would be hundreds of new witnesses clamoring for their place in the Roswell mythology. Turns out he was right (not about the mythology but about the new witnesses). People have been all over the place claiming to know something special or someone special or something important about the Roswell case.

Macdonald writes about the Roswell story as if this is something new but draws his information from the Roswell Daily Record article published in 1947. He even includes the irrelevant tale of Dan Wilmot, a Roswell resident who saw something on July 2, 1947. That Wilmot made the report about a craft in the sky doesn't necessarily mean that what he saw was what was responsible for the debris found by W.W. "Mack" Brazel in early July 1947.

What annoyed me first here was this idea that the alien spacecraft was spying on our testing of nuclear weapons, according to what Macdonald wrote. Of course, those of us who can think beyond the end of a sentence realize the flaw in this theory. The first atomic explosion took place in July 1945, with two more in Japan in August 1945... So, if it was atomic explosions that grabbed the aliens' attention, wouldn't they have gone to Japan rather than New Mexico? There had been more explosions there.

The ongoing saga of the mystery booms being heard across the United States continues, and possibly taken a turn for the spooky. Over the past year, unexplained explosions and booming noises have been shaking homes and terrifying residents in many rural parts of the continental U.S. While the vast majority of these anomalous booms are left unexplained, the FBI has taken a particular interest in mysterious explosion noises recently heard across rural Pennsylvania just north of Philadelphia. Does this mean some sort of sleeper cell terrorist group might be practicing with improvised explosives?

Given the craters found alongside rural roads, though, who knows? To add more mystery and a healthy dose of conspiracy to these recent booms in Pennsylvania, though, news reports suggest the ever-elusive and ominous Men in Black might now be on the case, doing what they do best: creeping out bewildered eyewitnesses. Is there more to this case than meets the eye?

Speaking to The Intelligencer, a newspaper covering the Upper Bucks County area of Pennsylvania where these mystery booms took place, residents described the "kinda spooky" experience they had following one of the recent unexplained booms. One resident who asked that her name not be used claims two eerily-familiar-sounding and unidentified agents of some kind showed up at her door unannounced, questioning her in a somewhat threatening manner:

You can read the rest of the article here.

Halloween might be a whopping five months away, but ghosts don't adhere to a calendar when it comes to making themselves known to the living. Some might appear in mirrors or dreams, while others will create an air of dread around the location of their demise. Perhaps most commonly, however, spirits will make noises when they wish to reach out to the other side.

Among the many, many stories, complaints, and questions that are posted to the Paranormal and Ghosts subreddits, there are a few frequently cited sounds that users mention when describing their possible haunting. They hear voices, disembodied footsteps, or, perhaps most chillingly, the sound of a woman sighing. Of course, any noise that's out of the ordinary can be unsettling, but there's something about these sounds in particular that leads people to believe that they are, truly, otherworldly.

It bears mentioning that the sounds you're hearing could be perfectly of this world. Make triple sure that you aren't actually dealing with a vermin infestation, carbon monoxide leak, faulty plumbing, or some other normal explanation before going too far down the paranormal rabbit hole.

A prominent psychiatrist dealing with the "world beyond" is saying that not only is demonic possession very real, the victims of possession should not be brushed aside. The number of people looking for an exorcism has risen in recent years putting more of a demand on priests and psychiatrists attempting to help people.

The number of people seeking exorcisms has risen worldwide, and it isn't just psychiatrists taking notice. The Vatican even recently completed training for exorcists amid the rise in what some believe to be demonic possession. But whether an outsider believes in possession or not, many do believe they need to be delivered from the demons inside them, making it very real for the victim of possession.

In April, at the Vatican training course for exorcist priests, participants were told that the demand for exorcism is booming as a result of a decline in Christian faith and the internet providing easy access to black magic, the occult, and Satanism.

A tourist claims he has spotted the famed Loch Ness monster and even has ten minutes of footage the creature 'cavorting' in the water.

Eoin O'Faodhagain said he was left stunned by the sighting of the 20ft 'monster' in the Scottish Highlands and has even had his footage accepted by the Official Loch Ness Monster Sightings Register.

The 53-year-old from Donegal, Ireland quickly grabbed his phone when he saw the elusive creature.

The hospital clerical worker took a ten minute video from the Loch Ness webcam.

Fuzzy videos captured by military pilots caused a media splash over the last six months, but what were those objects in the sky?

Since the Pentagon's release of three UFO videos, armchair experts have speculated that maybe the objects are birds or balloons or something mundane.

But now, the I-Team has obtained an in-depth report prepared by and for the military, and it analyzes the so-called Tic Tac UFO using the most sophisticated sensor systems in the world.

Over a two-week period in late 2004, an unknown, 45-foot long Tic Tac shaped object played cat and mouse with the U.S. Navy off the coast of California. The mighty U.S.S. Nimitz aircraft carrier, and its support ships including the U.S.S. Princeton, carrying the most sophisticated sensor systems in the world, repeatedly detected recurring glimpses of the Tic Tac but were unable to lock on.

The investigative "I-Team" for CBS affiliate KLAS-TV in Las Vegas, NV has brought forward new documents related to the secret Pentagon UFO program first revealed by the New York Times in December. But even stranger than the documents, which delved into theoretical warp drive and extra-dimensional technologies, was the response provided to KLAS-TV by an unnamed "senior manager" within the program, who connected the Pentagon's UFO program to poltergeists, "invisible entities" and "bizarre creatures."

The new statement from BAASS (Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies) to KLAS-TV indicates the team contracted by the Pentagon delved into phenomena far beyond the UFO purview indicated in the NYT's original reveal, in some ways continuing the paranormal research begun by founder Richard Bigelow in the 90s.

"The investigations by BAASS provided new lines of evidence showing that the UFO phenomenon was a lot more than nuts and bolts machines that interacted with military aircraft," the senior manager said. "The phenomenon also involved a whole panoply of diverse activity that included bizarre creatures, poltergeist activity, invisible entities, orbs of light, animal and human injuries and much more."

The BAASS manager also described research methodologies tailored to explain multiple eyewitnesses reporting "widely different events." The new methodology, premised on "utilizing the human body as a readout system for dissecting interactions with the UFO phenomenon," was put in place because BAASS came to believe evidence indicated "the UFO phenomenon was capable of manipulating and distorting human perception," making eyewitness testimony "increasingly untrustworthy."

Last week I dug up an old observation log from March 2012 with this entry:

The object was dark, just a bit lighter than the sky. It was long and thin, something like this:

[And I drew, basically, a boomerang. ]

Almost V-shaped.

It moved rapidly through the sky. It wasn't fixed, like the wing of an airplane, but moved slightly, like something organic. Though it seemed solid, its edges were blurred, like smoke.

It moved so quickly, it was gone within three seconds. It appeared in the south, just east of Saturn, and flew almost directly north.