MONSTERQUEST: Sasquatch Attack 2

History Channel - Air Date: 11/12/08

The MQ team returns to the remote Canadian cabin where, last year, they had strange occurrences that might have been attributed to bigfoot.  They've returned this time loaded for . . . well, bigfoot.  They've got more and better cameras, a "blind" to hide their surveillance equipment (making the cabin appear deserted at night), scent traps, camera traps and all sorts of science stuff.  They've also got new DNA and hair analysts (back home), utilizing more advanced science than previously.  As you recall last time, this cabin had been attacked by some strange creature which ransacked it.  A "nail trap" left by the owner seemed to have wounded something with very big feet.  Then there were the "rock throwing" incidents during filming.  The cabin is too remote for pranksters, and no known North American animals throw rocks.

Unfortunately, the new, well-equipped stake-out comes up empty -- though as they're waiting, a bigfoot is sighted 125 miles away.  Theorizing that the late spring may have kept the creature further south to feed on blueberries, the crew decides to pack up and relocate their search.  They interview witnesses and search the area, but find only bear tracks and one possible footprint in the grass.  Sadly, again, it seems this team has come up a day late and a dollar short.  The new DNA tests find only fungus, no primate DNA (as before).  Is the sample just too degraded, or was the old test contaminated?  A hair reclaimed from a fishing rod case thrown at the cabin (in a recent incident) proves to be merely human hair.  But what has done the throwing?  Perhaps a longer expedition -- say, a few months -- could find out.

In the meantime, it wouldn't surprise me if this "bigfoot cabin" is now fetching a premium price as "fishing" rental with other monster hunters.  While entertaining, this episode adds little new to the previous case.  Too bad they brought all those experts and all that equipment for nothing.  Maybe next time.

UFO HUNTERS - Hist. - UFO Emergency

History Channel - Original Air Date: 11/5/08

The team looks into two historical cases of UFO encounters, one from 1994, another from 2000, which were investigated by police officers in Ohio and Illinois.  The show is filled with dispatcher audio tapes, and features interviews with cops and dispatchers, too.  In the Trumble County, Ohio case, Sgt. Molaro sees something that lit up the highway with bright lights, flew silently, and may have been cylindrical.  At the same time, his car stalled and his radio became inoperable.  When the object moved away, the car started on its own.  What did these officers and people see?  The show then recaps other similar encounters from history, and interviews a witness from 28 years earlier.  As a trucker, he watched a UFO with a bright beam of light move over his rig (as he hid underneath).  Both present and past witnesses describe the UFOs moving off at incridble speed.  In 2000, a similar incident took place near Lebanon, Highland, & Millstaff, Illinois.  A new video has come to light, purporting to show the UFO from that night, January 4th -- though the video is from much earlier in the evening (8pm) than the police sighting (4am).  The witness claims that the four lights appeared in various formations.  Expert Ted declares the 20-minute tape appears to be good quality and perhaps they can learn something from it--but they learn very little.  The show brings in a CGI sketch artist to interview the witnesses and create a simulation model -- but the two sketches are very different, though there is some overlap.  (The investigation crew suggests that it could be because of the sighting conditions.)  The team then investigates a similar incident, nine months earlier, in 1994 in Holland, Michigan -- again, four lights were seen in the sky.  Though the narrator says that multiple people were seeing the same object in these cases, the descriptions don't really match.  Radar signatures suggest a fast-moving object that breaks into three objects.  The radar operator seems to confirm details of the police sightings from the incident.  But no one has any idea what either the lights or radar hits could actually be.

And, of course, being a mythology show, UFO Hunters doesn't offer any non-alien possibilities.  As usual, the show's "investigations" consist of interviewing witnesses, compiling 911 tapes, doing recreations, and speculating about the alien nature of the craft, whatever they may have been.

Return of the Vampire

I thought this was too funny/interesting not to share:

Zombies are red, Vampires are blue

Enjoy.

MONSTER QUEST: Real Dragons

History Channel - Original Air Date: November 5, 2008

Thousands of remote islands dot the western Pacific Ocean; do ancient dragon-like reptiles still live here?  Aboriginal cave paintings in Australia seem to show lizards larger than men.  Do these giant goanna (monitor) lizards -- Megalania -- exist today?  Cryptozoologist Rex Gilroy believes they lived as recently as 1890, when such a creature reportedly attacked Australian livestock.  Other sightings are more recent, and though scientists are skeptical, Gilroy has plaster casts of footprints.  He also claims to have found massive lizard like tracks in the forest in January 2008.  The tracks are 12-inches across, and MQ will have them analyzed by a reknowned paleontologist.  An MQ team tromps out into the outback forest to search for evidence of the beast.  Images of dragons are as old as mankind, but whether they were combinations of existing animals or, perhaps, based on fossils discovered by ancient peoples remains open to debate.  But could something like Megalania still live today, 40,000 years after the giants' supposed extinction?  How big a population would be needed to maintain the species?  Though monitors can reproduce by parthenogenesis (without male fertilization), it seems unlikely that could mantian the species for long (as -- oddly -- females cannot be created this way).

The komodo dragon is the world's largest monitor lizard, and it lives in Indonesia.  The largest, though, are still only ten feet long -- merely a third the size of Megalania.  One expert says dragons can mutate quickly, over the course of only three generations, so a giant mutation might be possible. In any case, the dragons can be dangerous to humans.  In 2007, an eight-year-old boy was attacked by a komodo dragon; he died before he could get medical attention.  Swedish divers also had to fight off a dragon in the same year.  A 20-footer would be much more dangerous.  And most komodos have deadly bacteria in their saliva.  Despite this, a team of researchers wrestles with several large komodos in the same way that Steve Erwin uset to wrestle crocodiles.  In the outback, camera traps are set to try and find the mythical creature.  But only ravens take the bait.  And the plaster print looks too symetrical for the paleontologist; a fake, perhaps?  As usual on MonsterQuest, "The chase goes on."

MONSTER QUEST: Jaws in Illinois

History Channel - Original Air Date: October 29, 2008

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the river, sharks swim upstream from the sea -- sometimes hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean. In 2007, at Simmesport, LA, 160 miles from the Gulf of Mexico, fishermen caught a five-foot-long bull shark.  They caught a half dozen smaller sharks that same day, and swear a ten-footer got away.  Bull sharks can live in fresh water, unlike most of their kin, and they have been known to attack and kill people.  They are suspected of the series of killings in New Jersey at the turn of the 20th century. Monsterquest goes looking foor bull sharks in the inland waterways of Louisiana. They get some bites, but no sharks to show for it.  In the waters of the Saint Lawrence River, MQ divers go looking for Greenland sharks.  Diving at night, the team sees an apparent shark on the sonar, but can't get their cameras on it.  During the day, though, they find one, its skin traced with a spiderweb of scars.  Since Greenland sharks can live 200 years (!), the 12-toof shark has potentially had a long time to bet beaten up.  The dive confirms that huge sharks are living in the Saint Lawrence River, close to shore.  Greenland sharks are both scavenger and predator; are they a threat to humans?  A week after the show finishes shooting another 6-footer is caught in Louisiana.  Clearly the sharks are there, but whether this is a new phenominon or has gone unnoted previously, remains in question.

MONSTER QUEST: Monster Spiders

History Channel - Original Air Date: October 22, 2008

Do monster spiders up to 5 feet across live in the Amazon, the Congo, or other remote regions of the world?  In 1938, a British couple went to the Congo on a honeymoon safari.  They saw a 4-5 foot creature crossing the road that they at first thought was a big cat or monkey, but then they realized it was a huge spider.  In ancient times, giant sea scorpions got as large as crocodiles, but could huge arachnids still exist?  In the Amazon, a shaman describes a basketball-sized tarantula that could rear up to the height of a man.  In Iraq, US troops report gigantic camel spiders, and in they're know as Texas "deer killers."  How big can such known species grow?  US soldiers claim to have been attacked by cat-sized camel spiders (actually a solifugid).  The one photo of a supposed monster, though, turns out to be two creatures, not one -- though such solifugids have been reported to grow five inches cross.

Despite eyewitness reports, experts doubt that there is enough oxygen in the air today (21%) to support such monsters; air in the age of giant insects had 60% more oxygen.  Bugs have very poor circulatory systems and needed the richer oxygen content to grow to huge size.  In 2007, an enormous web the size of 2 football fields was found in a forest in Texas.  Whether it was created by many spiders working together or by an unknown giant?  Scientists remain unsure.  Field teams turn up no giants, though they find some big tarantulas.  While eyewitnesses can't be discounted, to date there is no solid evidence that monster spiders still exist.

Burlington Vortex Conference 2008

Just finished the BVC 2008.  Had a great time acting as videographer, AV-tech guy, and occasional MC and schedule maven.  The speakers were a combination of people I'd heard of and people I hadn't, but all of them turned in good performances during their lectures.  Here's a list with an over-brief description of what the speakers did:

Tecumseh Brown-Eagle - linguistics and migrations
Stanton Friedman - Roswell expert
Heidi Hollis - shadow people, meeting Jesus
Frank Joseph - Atlantis in Wisconsin, Ark of the Covenant
Bonnie Meyer - contactee, alien invasion
Don Schmidt - Roswell expert
Jerry E. Smith - weather control, Spear of Destiny
Sherry Strubb - Wisconsin ghosts
Dr. Claude Swanson - the science of the paranormal
Peter Moon - Montauk project

There were a couple of other expected guests who couldn't make it at the last minute.  All of the people listed did two, hour-long lectures except Sherry who gave one, and Stanton, my favorite of the bunch, who gave three.  The only problem was that there were almost too many speakers for the time alotted.  (Even after the drop-outs.)  This happened mostly because the local theater had demanded -- and got -- a continuous schedule before dropping out.  (Leaving us holding the bag.)  That resulted in a constant pressure to get people on and off the stage in an hour.

As AV guy and videographer, I was there for nearly every minute of the 22+ hours of lectures over the weekend.  I made some new friends and lined up some prospective guests for Uncanny Radio.

There was a "meet and mingle" dinner on Saturday night in what used to be an underground speakeasy, and there were tours of the local tunnels and the haunted woods (both of which I was too busy to attend; but I live here and will get to go some other time).

Friday was pretty chaotic, as those of us working and/or helping out tried to deal with mechanical gremlins and the disruption of having to hold the events in the cleared-out Mysteries Museum, rather than the planned theater.  (Which cancelled at the last moment.)  Those obstacles made things tricky, but by the next day, Saturday, things adjusted and the schedule ran more smoothly.  Several attendees, Russ and Diana in particular, came through big-time in helping solve the video/display problems.  (Thanks!)

The whole event seemed very well attended to me.  The lecture room was extremely busy, and sported a crowd of 30 to 60 (or more) at every event.  The Cafe, with food, sovenirs, and signing tables, also seemed packed much of the time.

I spoke to some fans of Uncanny Radio, but didn't sell any books -- probably because I was too darn busy running the lecture room.  I'm sure I would have done better, too, if the book I'm doing with Nick Redfern (and friends) hadn't gotten hung up in producton.  It's called Uncanny Encounters: Roswell.  Look for it soon.

People seemed happy, despite the initial chaos, and numerous attendees expressed to me their desire to do it again next year.  Certainly I hope to do it again.  With luck, Mary and the SciFi Cafe did well enough to justify another year.  As long as they didn't run themselves into debt the way the It Came from Lake Michigan film festival did, they should be fine.

Next step is to figure out a plan for mastering and releasing DVDs of the conference.  Should we release the "raw" footage of the whole thing, or try to edit it down into highlights? Right now, noe of us are sure.  If you've got an opinion, leave a comment.

And I hope to see you all at the Burlington Vortex Conference next year!