High Strangeness - Introduction

In May of 2000 Guido Canales, a resident of the Chilean town of Codao, reported being attacked by a massive gorilla-like creature with wings and golden eyes, that viciously scratched him before being driven off by a neighbor's porch light. The monster was then tracked down by Guido's brother Luchito and other friends, surviving a shotgun blast to the chest before flying off into the night sky.

Starting in 1980, Debbie Jordan of Indiana began receiving strange phone calls from a mysterious caller whom made strange moaning and muttering sounds with the roar of a factory in the background. These phone calls continued to come every Wednesday at about 3:00 in the afternoon, with the voice varying from anger to sadness but always remaining unintelligble. Even when Jordan changed her number to an unlisted one, the calls continued for nine more months, ending when Jordan gave birth to her son. Strangely enough, at three years old her son developed a speech problem during which he would moan much like the strange caller, eventually growing out of the problem. Jordan connected the phone calls to her lifetime of UFO encounters, including landings and even abductions.

In 1959 the Belfast Telegraph in Ireland reported that a man operating a bulldozer on a County Carlow farm reported that a three-foot-tall red man ran out from beneath his machine and dashed about a hundred yards across the field, over a fence and into the adjacent field. Three other men witnessed the figure, making this an important multiple-witness sighting of one of the "Little Folk".

One morning in 1979, a Scottish man named Robert Taylor reported being attacked by two spiked spheres that emerged from a landed UFO and attempted to drag him towards the craft. He reported fainting and waking up completely disorientated, driving his trunk into a ditch and having to walk all the way home on foot. The local police sent his torn pants to a forensic lab, which concluded that the damage to his trousers was consistent with his report.

On October 31, 1989, a young woman named Doristine Gipson encountered a frightening creature while driving on Bray Road near Delavan in the state of Wisconsin. While stopped on the road, she bore witness to a large, dark hairy form that jumped onto her trunk as she sped away in terror, slipping off due to the moisture on the car and falling onto the pavement. She would not be the only one to have strange encounters in this part of Wisconsin, as the creature dubbed "The Beast of Bray Road" or the "Manwolf" began to be seen first near Elkhorn and then throughout the state.

What do these five cases have in common? Simple - they all fall into the category of High Strangeness, a term attributed to the famous UFO researcher J. Allen Hynek. This is the category that is so far removed from science as to be untouchable by almost all scientists, and even mainstream researchers in the ufology and cryptozoology fields are hesitant to touch such cases, resigning most of them to the fringe. These are the cases that are so bizarre and even non-sensical that they defy all logic and confound all those who research and investigate them, coming across as more scenes from a old science fiction or horror movie than objective parts of reality. They can incorporate strange beings, paranormal events, time and space distortion (known as the "Oz Factor"), heightened states of consciousness, and other factors that make them appear absurd on their surface. Never the less, such reports of High Strangeness continue to come in from witnesses all over the world, demonstrating that the events described are either real and happen every day, or that people all the world are either liars or suffer from a mass psychological condition that causes them to see things that don't exist and have never existed.

So then what is the best course of action to take regarding High Strangeness? I propose a kind of intellectual agnosticism, neither dismissing such reports right away before examination but not buying into them at first glance either, starting off balanced on the proverbial fence. If a case should prove, after carefully checking the credibility of the witness(es) and performing an investigation, to be a solid case, then it can be moved to the realm of credible cases, and spark speculation as to its causes. However, if it should prove to be a hoax or hallucination, then it can safely be discarded and regarded as fake.

Many of the High Strangeness cases to be discussed on this blog will no doubt raise the skepticism of many readers, leading them to judge the reports bunk and dismiss it all as flat out impossible. However, I say that all the reports should be read with an open mind, for a mind that is closed considers nothing and dimisses everything. As long as the possibility exists and the reports continue, there is no shame in daring to consider that reality may be stranger than we ever thought possible, and that bizarre creatures and abnormal phenomena may yet lurk in the dark woods and near the lonely highways of the world, forever remaining just out of the light but waiting for you around the next corner..