Squatting out in the dry lake bed of a desert wasteland in the Mojave Desert near Landers, California, is a massive solid granite rock that looms over the parched earth around it like some monolith from a lost civilization. Rather aptly named simply “Giant Rock,” the immense boulder is seven stories high and covering 5,800 square feet of land, making it one of the largest free standing rocks in the world. It is a formidable sight, and it is perhaps fitting that this place has long been held as sacred by the Native American tribes of the region, often seen as the heart of the Mother Earth, the people of this land once convening here to celebrate the changing of the seasons and shamans coming out across the forbidding desert to draw from its power. In more modern times, Giant Rock is also the scene of a strange tale that involves secret underground cities, aliens, a mad prophet, and a time machine.

During World War II, a German immigrant and desert prospector by the name of Frank Critzer became rather fascinated with Giant Rock, and went about tunneling beneath it looking to mine any riches he could find buried in the earth there, and he would eventually carve out rooms to use as a full time subterranean residence there. He became known as the eccentric mad loner who lived out under the rock, and he didn’t really have any friends until he met a former pilot, aircraft mechanic and flight inspector named George Van Tassel while in town pumping gas at a garage. The two got along well, becoming quick friends, and that was when Critzer began to tell him of the strange things he had experienced while living out in the desert under that mystical sacred rock.

Giant Rock

According to Critzer, his mining had uncovered strange tunnels down there in the gloom, which seemed to have completely smooth sides as if fashioned from glass and which plummeted down into the sheer blackness of the earth below to the unknown. Critzer claimed that these mysterious tunnels often emanated a strange buzzing sound somewhat akin to static, which had become so insistent that he had even built a special radio in an effort to distinguish the frequency of the constant drone. Critzer was certain that these were no normal naturally formed tunnels, and expressed his desire to explore them further, but he would never get a chance. In 1942, he fell under suspicion of being a German spy, and was confronted by authorities determined to take him in for questioning. The stubborn old loner refused to budge, and at some point during the tense standoff the police used a gas grenade to flush him out, which unintentionally ignited some mining dynamite that was lying around and erupted into a huge explosion that killed Critzer but left the rock itself relatively unfazed. The siege had ended in tragedy for Critzer, but for Van Tassel it had opened up an opportunity.

In 1947, Van Tassel moved with his family from his home in Barstow, California in order to start a new simple life out in the desert, and remembering the odd mysteries he had heard from Critzer he decided to move to Giant Rock. He moved in to Critzer’s cave home under the rock and leased the small nearby derelict airport from the Bureau of Land Management. He fixed up the airstrip and built a diner, shop, guest ranch and gas station there, turning it into a proper airport once again and the rock into a minor tourist attraction, and in the meantime he also held meditation sessions at Giant Rock to capitalize on the New Age idea that it was a sort of natural Earth power point. He also spent his free time poking around in the caves and tunnels under the rock, and it was these excursions that would take his life in a bizarre new direction.

There’s no way to really ease into it, so we’ll just come out and say it- it was aliens. Van Tassel claimed that he had not only found the strange tunnels mentioned by Critzer, but also that they were made by extraterrestrials, and through their crystalline structure he had managed to pick up messages from aliens from the planet Venus. Sometimes these incidents were just telepathic messages, but at other times he said that he had somehow astrally projected to meet the aliens themselves and ride aboard their ships. On one such occasion, an alien named Solganda brought him aboard their ship and taught him various advanced secrets on how to extend human life and heal any disease or ailment, and they also allegedly gave him blueprints for how to make a building that would serve as a “time machine for basic research on rejuvenation, anti-gravity, and time travel” that would “recharge energy into living cell structures, to bring about longer life with youthful energy.” He called this device the “Integratron,” and became absolutely obsessed with making it a reality, starting construction in 1954.

The Integratron

Van Tassel gathered together others who he told about his alien encounters and began work on what was to be a domed structure made up of non-ferromagnetic materials: wood, concrete, glass, and fiberglass, lacking any metal pieces whatsoever except a spinning copper wire core and a rotating metal structure on the outside he called an “electrostatic dirod.” As construction was going on, Van Tassel began holding annual UFO conventions in order to raise money for the project, with some of these gatherings attracting thousands of people, at its peak drawing in over 10,000 attendees. These conventions brought in many famous UFO contactees, and made Van Tassel so well known that he started The Ministry of Universal Wisdom and The College of Universal Wisdom in order to share the telepathic messages he was constantly receiving from the aliens, and he also wrote four books over the years, I Rode A Flying Saucer (1952, 1955) Into This World and Out Again (1956), The Council of Seven Lights (1958), Religion and Science Merged, and When Stars Look Down.

This would go one for over two decades, with Van Tassel devoting all of his time to these conventions and the building of the Integratron, but he would sadly never see it in its completed form. In 1978, just a few weeks before the machine was to be officially unveiled, Van Tassel would die from a heart attack, having never seen the fruits of all of his hard work or whether his Integratron would even work at all. To this day curiosity seekers and New Agers make pilgrimages to this desolate place, wanting to see the structure themselves or perhaps hoping to see UFOs and aliens. Whether any of Van Tassel’s visions were true or whether his machine ever had any hope of actually working, it is all a very curious tale and historical oddity that still serves to spark the imagination.

Of all of the strange things the UFO phenomenon has brought to us, one of the weirdest are the groups of people that are drawn to somehow revere and worship them. These groups pop up from time to time, warping UFOs into twisted religious cults, some of which turn out to be quite dangerous. Yet, others are merely odd, and one of the weirder of these was a UFO cult that sprouted up in California in the 1950s, which took its members on a wild mind trip and has quite the strange and creepy history.

The whole thing starts in 1954 in Los Angeles, California, when an Ernest L. Norman and his wife Ruth E. Norman came forward to start a very unique new group. Ernest himself was purportedly a child prodigy and self-proclaimed psychic with supposed telekinetic abilities, that is the power to move objects with his mind, as well as later according to him a scientist and an aeronautical engineer. He apparently met Ruth as he travelled the country as a medium putting war widows in touch with their husbands who had died during World War II. Ruth herself was a bit of a character, claiming to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene, so it was love at first sight, and the two got along splendidly. Both of them had been devout New Agers at the time they met, and after marrying within weeks of meeting, they set out to publish numerous New age books, some of which were channeled through Ernest via alien intelligences, including ‘transmissions’ from Mars and Venus, and before long they were forming their very own cult.

Ernest L. Norman and Ruth E. Norman

Ernest’s books were very popular among the New Age scene at the time, and as such they attracted many followers, and this evolved into the Unarius Academy of Science, with Unarius being an acronym for “Universal Articulate Interdimensional Understanding of Science”. The main goal of the group was to promote a new “interdimensional science of life” based upon “fourth-dimensional” physics principles, and they were heavily into this interdimensional aspect of existence. The main idea was that the soul is immortal, and that we are constantly reincarnated over many lifetimes, all of this controlled by interplanetary alien overlords, who would frequently give various channeled messages to followers but mostly through Ernest. Unarius touted itself as a scientific belief system, based on real laws of proven “fourth dimensional science,” and it all involved an elaborate world of a hodgepodge of half baked ideas on atoms, karma, reincarnation, past-life memories, channeling, vibrational energies, cosmic forces, and “spiritual planets.” If one could master these far-out concepts, they were said to be in full control of their life and able to heal themselves of any woe life could throw at them.

There were a lot of fringe and often insane ideas thrown around at the time, such as that Asian races were the progeny of ancient interstellar migrants who began colonizing Mars a million years ago, and it was all pretty wild to say the least. These alien masters, or “space brothers” were from an advanced galactic coalition of planets, and were said to be on track to inevitably arrive on Earth from the stars in 33 spaceships to improve humanity. These spaceships were predicted to land in 2001, after which the entire world would experience a spiritual and technological renaissance and evolution. It all sounds pretty neat, actually, neat enough to attract loads of the disillusioned and outcast. During these years. Earnest would publish several series of books supposedly channeled to him through these alien interdimensional beings, such as the Voice Series of books, which chronicled his astral travels to other planets, and in which he explained that planets such as Mars and Venus had “healing wards” where troubled souls could go to be cleansed. He also wrote his magnum opus The Infinite Concept of Cosmic Creation, which would go on to serve as his main teachings for his followers. He made much of the planet Venus, describing the planet’s inhabitants as beings of pure energy, and more technologically and spiritually advanced, with much to teach us. It was all written with heavy usage of official sounding technical jargon and pseudoscientific mumbo jumbo, so to the uninitiated it would seem to be very authorative and believable, which only served to gain it more respectability among the gullible.

Ernest would die in 1971, after which his wife, who took on the name of “Uriel” as the alien emissary on Earth, would take over operations and move the headquarters to the San Diego suburb of El Cajon, which was meant to not only be a meeting place for members, but also the final destination of the aliens they expected to arrive. Under Ruth’s guidance, the organization gained a larger public profile, and she became a bit of a minor celebrity, appearing on shows such as Late Night with David Letterman and The David Susskind Show, all while building her own studio for their purposes, which produced over 100 video programs that began airing on public access stations in the 80s. She claimed to be in constant communications with beings in the higher “nonatomic dimensions” or spiritual planes that they collectively called the Unariun Brotherhood, and this all fed into the beliefs of the group, with the idea being that these teachings could answer all questions about the universe and one’s existence.

Ruth Norman would pass away in 1993, but the movement would live on. Unfortunately, the planned alien coming did not come to pass in 2001 as promised, which caused a stir within the organization, but not its downfall. As these cults are wont to do, it was all explained away as humankind not being ready or some such nonsense, anything to avoid being wrong, and their activities continued, with chapters in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Nigeria, and the United Kingdom right up into the present. In the end the Unarius Academy of Science has gone down as one of the stranger cults to pop up around the UFO phenomenon and aliens, but it will no doubt certainly not be the last

There have long been tales of mysterious monsters and entities prowling the wilds of our world, and these have become fixtures in the world of cryptozoology, or the search for hidden and undiscovered animals. Yet, there are often strange things just as unusual that lie within the realm of trees and plants, which are every bit as bizarre and inexplicable. At times these can include trees and plants that seem to be very dangerous indeed, and here we will take a detour off into the brush and deep forests of the remote areas of our world, in order to come face to face with deadly cryptid plants.

With many of the deadly mystery plants supposedly encountered by explorers throughout history, we have something with which it is difficult to separate fact from pure myth. This is surely the case with a type of legendary grass common in Irish lore that is known as féar gortach, or literally “Hungry Grass.” Often said to be cursed or under the influence of some sort of entity such as fairies, Hungry Grass was said to cause an insatiable hunger, possibly even starvation, and profound weakness in anyone who walked across it, with the only way to pass safely being to carry some food. In some versions of the tale this grass is somewhat snake-like, and will actively wrap itself around unwary passersby. The grass was also said to corrupt and eat other crops, and was so persistent in lore that it was blamed in part for the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s. In some areas, such as a place called Hungry Hill, the grass was supposedly so plentiful that it was considered to be a death sentence to venture there, with those who entered never returning.

There are numerous other mythical supposed man-eating plants that are similarly within the shadows of legend, any reality they have uncertain. One of these is the so-called “Man-Eating Lotus of Nubia,” which was an enormous lotus tree renowned for its gorgeous flowers and also known to lure in prey with sweet, succulent fruit, only to lash out to kill and consume them. In an 1881 travelogue called Under the Punkah, explorer Phil Robinson told of how one of these man-eating plants had attacked his uncle. The uncle was reported as having emptied his firearm into the blood-thirsty tree, after which he had hacked away at it with a knife as it grabbed and stabbed at him with vines and branches. He was finally able to barely escape with his life, but one of his native guides had not been so lucky, and was devoured. Robinson described the Man-Eating Lotus:

This awful plant, that rears its splendid death-shade in the central solitude of a Nubian fern forest, sickens by its unwholesome humours all vegetation from its immediate vicinity, and feeds upon the wild beasts that, in the terror of the chase, or the heat of noon, seek the thick shelter of its boughs ; upon the birds that, flitting across the open space, come within the charmed circle of its power, or innocently refresh themselves from the cups of its great waxen flowers ; upon even man himself when, an infrequent prey, the savage seeks its asylum in the storm, or turns from the harsh foot-wounding sword-grass of the glade, to pluck the wondrous fruit that hang plumb down among the wondrous foliage. And such fruit! Glorious golden ovals, great honey drops, swelling by their own weight into pear-shaped translucencies. The foliage glistens with a strange dew, that all day long drips on to the ground below, nurturing a rank growth of grasses, which shoot up in places so high that their spikes of fierce blood-fed green show far up among the deep-tinted foliage of the terrible tree, and, like a jealous body-guard, keep concealed the fearful secret of the charnel-house within, and draw round the black roots of the murderous plant a decent screen of living green.

As similarly deadly flowering tree was known as the “Kumanga Killer Tree,” of Madagascar, which was first heard about by outsiders by the Czech explorer Ivan Mackerle in 1998. Natives claimed that this particular tree was found on only one part of the island and was said to have colorful flowers that exuded an extremely poisonous gas. The natives claimed to know where such a tree was and guided Mackerle to its location. During the trek, the expedition members were so concerned about the poisonous nature of the plant that they actually wore gas masks. When they arrived at the alleged Kumanga Killer Tree, they found no gas spewing flowers, but did find several animal skeletons under the tree. The lack of flowers, the natives explained, was due to the tree not being in bloom. Mackerle also uncovered a story of a former British army officer who allegedly took photographs of a tree on the island that had various animal skeletons strewn about its base. Whether this particular tree was either one of the aforementioned carnivorous trees or something new is uncertain. It is also unknown what became of these photographs, or if indeed they ever existed at all.

Interestingly, Mackerle only chanced upon this supposed discovery because he was in the region looking for yet another legendary man-eating tree, originally known from an old account brought back from the deepest jungles by the German explorer Carl Liche in 1878. The account describes in horrific detail the sacrifice of a village woman of the Mkodo tribe to a giant flesh eating tree. In a letter published in The South Australian Register in 1881, Liche described the unsettling scene that unfolded before him and his cohort, a man only known as Hendrick. Liche writes:

The slender delicate palpi, with the fury of starved serpents, quivered a moment over her head, then as if instinct with demoniac intelligence fastened upon her in sudden coils round and round her neck and arms; then while her awful screams and yet more awful laughter rose wildly to be instantly strangled down again into a gurgling moan, the tendrils one after another, like great green serpents, with brutal energy and infernal rapidity, rose, retracted themselves, and wrapped her about in fold after fold, ever tightening with cruel swiftness and savage tenacity of anacondas fastening upon their prey.

The tree itself was described as being around 8 feet in height, and having an appearance reminiscent of a pineapple, with eight long, pointed leaves that hung down from its top to the ground. The trunk of the tree was topped with a sort of receptacle that contained a thick liquid said to have soporific qualities that drugged potential prey and was believed to be highly addictive. Surrounding this receptacle were long, hairy tendrils with six white palpi resembling tentacles. The tree possessed white, transparent leaves that reminded Liche of the quivering mouthparts of an insect. This one account created great interest in the possibility that such a tree existed, prompting several expeditions to the region looking for it, of which Mackerle’s was one of them. Unfortunately, he was never able to find it, and the Man-Eating Tree of Madagascar is largely confined to folklore.

Courtesy of Karl Shuker and Enigmas Magazine

Yet another supposed killer tree was first described in 1870 by the missionary Reverend Henry Callaway in his book The Religious System of the Amazulu. In the remote wilds of South Africa was said to lurk a tree or bush that the natives called the Umdhlebe, which was said to constantly be surrounded by the skeletons of the animals it consumed. It supposedly killed its prey through an extremely potent toxin, which could kill small animals such as birds instantly, and which had profound effects on humans as well. It was said that anyone approaching the tree would develop bloodshot eyes, fevers, and delirium, and if one were to get too close they would be stricken by a condition in which they would be unable to sleep or even sit down, and would pace relentlessly until they wasted away and died. Interestingly, the only way to cure this mystery sickness was supposedly to use the fruit of the tree to concoct a antidote, a feat which only a few could pull off.

Besides deadly trees, there have also been accounts of other types of predatory legendary plants, and one of the most frightening of these must be a vampiric, blood-drinking vine said to dwell in the deepest swamps of Nicaragua. The vine is referred to by the natives as “The Devil’s Snare,” and is described as being rather like an octopus in appearance. The plant was described by one naturalist by the name of Mr. Dunstan, who came face to face with its horrifying nature while spending two years studying the plants and animals of the region. In the account, Dunstan claimed to have come across the plant while in a swamp region near Lake Nicaragua. Dunstan, who was collecting plant and insect specimens in the area, suddenly heard his dog let out a high pitched whine of terror, pain, or both. Dunstan allegedly hurried to the source of the cries and found his dog enveloped by a network of rope-like roots and fibers.  These fibers were of a dark, nearly black hue, and were covered with a thick gum that seemed to exude from some sort of pores. This gum was reportedly extremely adhesive and had a foul, animal odor. The ensnared dog struggled within this fibrous network and was wailing as if in a great deal of pain.

Once the startled Dunstan was able to recover from this gruesome sight, he tried desperately to cut the dog free with his knife, but found the vines to be surprisingly difficult to cut and to his horror found that the plant’s rope-like tendrils actively wrapped and curled themselves around his hands like sinuous fingers. Dunstan was able to extricate the animal only after an enormous amount of effort and he noticed that the grasping vines had left the skin of his hands red and blistered. He also noticed to his amazement that the dog was bloodstained and covered in spots that seemed puckered as if they had been sucked. The dog, though still alive, was extremely disoriented and had difficulty walking. The naturalist told the natives of his encounter and they explained that the vine was well known and feared in the area, warning him to stay well away from it. Undaunted, Dunstan tried to collect more information on the bizarre vine, but found it to be very difficult to approach or handle. However, through his observations he deduced where the plant’s remarkable suction abilities derived from and how it fed. He reported:

The plant’s power of suction is contained within a number of infinitesimal mouths or little suckers, which, ordinarily closed, open for the reception of food. If the substance is animal, the blood is drawn off and the carcass or refuse then dropped. A lump of raw meat being thrown to it, in the short space of five minutes the blood will be thoroughly drunk off and the mass thrown aside. Its voracity is almost beyond belief.

Dunstan also described how the plant was extremely hard to get off once it latched on, and could only be pulled away with a great deal of effort and possibly lost skin. He eventually gave up his studies on the vampire vine and very little else is known about it. Another supposed predatory vine was also reported in 1852 from the impenetrable, uncharted rain forests of interior Africa. According to Beachcombing’s Bizarre History Blog, one newspaper report of the era described the bizarre plant as follows:

According to some Italian journals, a new organised being has been discovered in the interior of Africa, which seems to form an immediate link between vegetable and animal life. This singular production of nature has the shape of a spotted serpent. It drags itself along on the ground; instead of a head, it has a flower, shaped like a bell, which contains a viscous liquid. Flies and other insects, attracted by the smell of the juice, enter into the flower, and are caught by the adhesive matter. The flower then closes, and, remains shut until the prisoners are bruised and transformed into chyle. The indigestible portions, such as the head and the wings, are thrown out by two aspiral openings. The vegetable serpent has a skin resembling leaves, a white and soft flesh, and, instead, of a bony skeleton, a cartilaginous frame filled with yellow marrow. The natives consider it a delicious food.

Finally, we have the strange story of an apparent giant, man-eating flower supposedly native to the forgotten South Pacific islet of El Banoor, a place said to be home to a man-eating flower known only as “The Death Flower.” The flower’s existence is mostly known of through the 1581 account of the explorer Captain Arkwright, who wrote of it in his journals of his travels. He described the plant as basically a huge, brightly colored flower with very large petals. The flower reportedly could release a soporific, sleep inducing aroma, whereupon the victim would lie down upon one of the petals. Once this happened, the flower would close and digest its sleeping prey alive. It seems like a fascinating account, but since it is only one report and the location of El Banoor is not specifically explained, it seems unlikely we will ever know for sure just how much veracity the account holds. Indeed, is there any truth to any of these, or are they tall tales told by travelers and explorers? We may never know for sure, and such accounts will perhaps always instill bafflement and a sense of wonder at what lies out there in the wild places of our world.

For centuries there have been legends and lore about mysterious spiritual entities commonly referred to as Fairies. Also known as Faeries, the Fae, and numerous other names, they permeate countless stories and legends since time unremembered, with appearances and origins as varied as the different cultures and people who believe in them. Most commonly depicted in popular culture as shimmering little flying forest spirit nymphs with wings, they are also mostly seen by the mainstream as benevolent and playful creatures. Yet, looking into the lore of fairies they are not always so, and stories abound of the darker side of these creatures, including mischief, murder, and kidnappings. One frequent theme in fairy lore is that they have a well-known reputation for abducting human beings, and far from mere legend and lore, this has reportedly happened for real many times over the centuries.

In most cases the person is just sort of whisked away, and this often happens to the very young. Another case concerns a young woman by the name of Annie McIntire, also from Ireland.

According to an account in a 1909 edition of the Preston Herald:

Annie McIntire, a venerable county Derry woman, has a sublime faith in the fairies. When being examined at a meeting of the Limavady Pension Committee as to her age, she fixed the time of her birth as Hallowe’en in 1839 giving for her recollection of the fact the startling reason that she had been ‘stolen by the fairies’. In reply to the chairman the woman said she was as certain of her abduction by the fairies as the she was alive. After carrying off the infant, she continued, the ‘wee people’ indulged in revels and dancing, in the wood at Carrowkeel, which were fortunately overheard by her brother when returning from Carndomagh. The brother had a book [a Bible? difficult to see the fairies being frightened off by a penny dreadful], which he threw into the wood, and scattered the fairies when he lifted his baby sister in his arms and carried her back in triumph. Further questioned the witness said her mother relatives were overjoyed at her safe return and gave themselves up to feasting and merriment. This was the only incident by which witness was able to determine her age, of which no record appeared in the census of 1841 or that of 1851.

Indeed babies are traditionally prime targets for fairies, and in order to protect their infants people would often sprinkle them with holy water or hang bars or rods of iron over their cribs, as iron was said to ward fairies off, with even adults often carrying around iron when venturing into a fairy’s territory. This was among many precautions mothers would take to protect both themselves and their babies from fairies. 20^th century fairy researcher W.Y. Evans-Wentz said of this:

The fairies were wont to take away infants and their mothers, and many precautions were taken to safeguard them till purification and baptism took place, when the fairy power became ineffective. Placing iron about the bed, burning leather in the room, giving mother and child the milk of a cow which had eaten of the mothan, pearl-wort (Pinguicula vulgaris), a plant of virtue, and similar means were taken to ensure their safety. If the watching-women neglected these precautions, the mother or child or both were spirited away to the fairy bower.

This does not seem to always work, though, and in another account we have a case from the site Irish Central from a witness called “Grace.” She writes:

Don’t believe in Fairy abductions? My Granny would have a sit down with you and soon set you straight. From the very day of her birth, Granny’s parents carefully lay their iron fire-poker across the basket she slept in. They were believer’s you see, in the Good People. Well, wasn’t everyone back then? But times have changed and now there are fewer who believe. Who knows, maybe the Good People like it that way. My Granny thinks so and she says she should know.

“I’ve lived one foot in our world and the other foot in theirs” so she says. You see, when Granny was but a few months old, the Good People tried to steal her away. Without a drop of whiskey on her breath, she’ll tell you that she was asleep in her wee basket when there was a commotion out back of her parent’s cottage. They lived in County Limerick at that time, it was a farm, with mainly sheep she says, and anyway, all hell had broken loose tween sheep and dogs and Granny’s Mam and Pop upped and ran outside to see the damage. As it happened, there was nothing to see, nothing at all. It had been nothing but bluster, for the sheep and dogs were only calm and dozey. Which was strange in itself.

Granny’s Mam was pretty canny, and she hightailed it back to the cottage to find Granny, still wrapped tight in her blanket, laying at the threshold at the front door. Fast asleep. Across the room from her basket. When she was older, Granny was told by her parents that the Good People had distracted them so they could steal her away for she was ‘touched’, having one blue eye and one green you see. Only they couldn’t get her out from the cottage on account she’d been baptized. Granny will tell you the iron bar did nothing to keep the Good People from reaching in her basket and what’s more, it wasn’t true, her being baptized. It’s what her parents told anyone who asked, but in truth, she was yet to be baptized and only a day or two after the ‘visit’ as Granny calls it, her parents took her on the quiet to the Priest for to get the job done. 

So we can only guess that the Good People dropped Granny to the ground when they heard her Mam approaching. I think Granny enjoys telling the story and wears it as a kind of badge actually. It is remarked by many who have known Granny that she has lived a charmed life on account of her touch by the Good People. There could be something to that, she is nearing 100 years old after all and as bright and feisty as ever before.

Not all such abductions are of babies, but the victims are typically young, and some of the strangest reports of fairy abductions come from who have managed to come back to tell the tale. A very weird earlier report also has to do with what is called a “Fairy Circle,” a sort of portal between the land of the Fae and our reality, which in this account supposedly existed near the farm of Llwyn y Ffynon, near the Vale of Neath in South Wales. In 1755, two servants on the farm, a Rhys ap Morgan, and Llewellyn Walter, were walking towards the farm one evening when Rhys stopped and told his companion he could hear music playing, although Llewellyn could hear nothing. Rhys told the Llewellyn to continue back home while he went to go search for who was playing the music and talk to them. It was all very odd, since only Rhys could hear the alleged music, and Llewellyn suspected that he was just trying to get out of work, finally just leaving his friend to head home.

When morning came, Rhys was nowhere to be seen, and so Llewellyn told his boss what had happened the previous night. The area was searched, and they even searched the nearby alehouse, but there was no sign of Rhys, and suspicion began to fall on Llewellyn that he had done something to him. This would continue for a full year, before the story found its way to a local farmer who thought it might have to do with fairies. He asked Llewellyn to take him and some friends to the exact spot where Rhys had disappeared, and the farmer claimed that it was a fairy circle and that Rhys had been snatched away within it. At that moment Llewellyn could allegedly hear harp music that no one else could, and the farmer noticed that the servant’s foot was partly within the circle. When all present placed their feet within the circle, they found that they too could hear the music, and they could also see little child-sized figures dancing about along with the missing Rhys.

Llewellyn then grabbed his friend and pulled him out of the circle, after which Rhys said he wanted to dance a little more, as he had just gotten there. When asked what he meant, Rhys claimed to have been there for scarcely 5 minutes, despite the fact that a whole year had passed. Indeed, he had no inkling at all that he had been gone so long, and he also found himself unable to clearly remember his time with the little people in that circle. The next morning the circle was checked to find that it was trodden down and filled with tiny footprints the size of a person’s thumb. Oddly, after leaving the circle Rhys’ health would rapidly deteriorate, and he would die not long after. What happened here? Some of these cases can be quite harrowing, such as an account written of in the 1910 book The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries, by W.Y. Evans-Wentz. The case revolves around a witness who says that when he was a boy he was out with his brother and cousin when they were almost abducted by a group of fairies. He says of the bizarre experience:

One day, just before sunset in midsummer, and I a boy then, my brother and cousin and myself were gathering bilberries (whortleberries) up by the rocks at the back of here, when all at once we heard music. We hurried round the rocks, and there we were within a few hundred feet of six or eight of the gentle folk, and they dancing. When they saw us, a little woman dressed all in red came running out from them towards us, and she struck my cousin across the face with what seemed to be a green rush. We ran for home as hard as we could, and when my cousin reached the house she fell dead. Father saddled a horse and went for Father Ryan. When Father Ryan arrived, he put a stole about his neck and began praying over my cousin and reading psalms and striking her with the stole; and in that way brought her back. He said if she had not caught hold of my brother, she would have been taken forever.

From the same book is the story of a man who tells of his frightening encounter with what he calls the “gentry,” another word for fairy. One day as he was out near a place called Ben Bulbin he had a curious encounter with a fairy that seemed about to abduct him. He says of the rather odd series of events:

When I was a young man I often used to go out in the mountains over there to fish for trout, or to hunt; and it was in January on a cold, dry day while carrying my gun that I and a friend with me, as we were walking around Ben Bulbin, saw one of the gentry for the first time. I knew who it was, for I had heard the gentry described ever since I could remember; and this one was dressed in blue with a head-dress adorned with what seemed to be frills. When he came up to us, he said to me in a sweet and silvery voice, “The seldomer you come to this mountain the better. A young lady here wants to take you away.” Then he told us not to fire off our guns, because the gentry dislike being disturbed by the noise. And he seemed to be like a soldier of the gentry on guard. As we were leaving the mountains, he told us not to look back, and we didn’t. Another time I was alone trout-fishing in nearly the same region when I heard a voice say, “It is —— bare-footed and fishing.” Then there came a whistle like music and a noise like the beating of a drum, and soon one of the gentry came and talked with me for half an hour. He said, “Your mother will die in eleven months, and do not let her die unanointed.” And she did die within eleven months. As he was going away he warned me, “You must be in the house before sunset. Do not delay! Do not delay! They can do nothing to you until I get back in the castle.” As I found out afterwards, he was going to take me, but hesitated because he did not want to leave my mother alone. After these warnings I was always afraid to go to the mountains, but lately I have been told I could go, if I took a friend with me.

In some cases people have been reported as being gone for a length of time, only to somehow find their way back, usually dazed, confused, and with no clear memory of what has happened to them. One report from The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries speaks of this, and explains how something about what it calls “Fairyland” as being a place in which time runs differently, and which has a way of preventing the abductee from being able to speak of it. It explains:

Persons in a short trance-state of two or three days duration are said to be away with the fairies enjoying a festival. The festival may be very material in its nature, or it may be purely spiritual. Sometimes one may thus go to Faerie for an hour or two; or one may remain there for seven, fourteen, or twenty-one years. The mind of a person coming out of Fairyland is usually a blank as to what has been seen and done there. Another idea is that the person knows well enough all about Fairyland, but is prevented from communicating the knowledge. A certain woman of whom I knew said she had forgotten all about her experiences in Faerie, but a friend who heard her objected, and said she did remember, and wouldn’t tell. A man may remain awake at night to watch one who has been to Fairyland to see if that one holds communication with the fairies. Others say in such a case that the fairies know you are on the alert, and will not be discovered.

Similarly we have a case from Ancient Origins, which relates the bizarre ordeal of a woman who disappeared near what is called a “Fairy Fort,” usually a mound, cairn of rocks or boulder that draws in fairies and has great significance for them. The report reads:

Finally, as an example of this darker aspect to fairy encounters this account from the Irish folklore archives demonstrates the upset and the confusion which many feel before they can even speak about what they believe happened to them. In this case a family happen to live close to an ancient fairy fort and one morning as a woman is using a spinning wheel she noticed a tiny person standing by the door of the house. When the woman stood up and walked to the door to investigate she was taken away by a group of small people. When the family arrived home and noticed their aunt had vanished they searched everywhere in the vicinity but found no sign of her. They searched the drains, the ditches and even the fairy fort itself. It was on the third day of her disappearance that one of the family was walking by the fort when they saw the aunt kneeling next to it. She had vanished while holding a carving knife and this was stuck in the ground next to her. The aunt could not speak for days after her return and it was only then that the family learned of her fairy abduction.

There are countless other reports along these lines, and it all goes to show that the Fae are not always the harmless little forest spirits they are so often depicted as in popular culture. Indeed, in the traditional tales and lore they are generally described as quite powerful beings to be respected, and they are certainly not always friendly by our definition. Such tales as we have looked at here serve to show us a different angle of the fairy phenomenon, and they certainly fire up the imagination whether real or not.

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Today’s article is the third in a trilogy on how aliens might be trying to find ways to manipulate, infiltrate and ultimately control us. The first part was a look at how the Men in Black, Black Eyed Children and Women in Black are tied to this. The second part was on how the Contactees of the 1950s were clearly manipulated – and mind-controlled – by the so-called Space Brothers, who claimed to have been beneficial, friendly ETs. Now, we come to the matter of how the alien abduction angle is connected to all of this.  It’s a phenomenon that was pretty much unknown until September 19, 1961. Yes, there were a few, earlier cases, but, for the most part, they were not publicized until after September 19. What, exactly, is so significant about that particular date? The answer is that it was the date of a now-historic UFO event which occurred to a married couple from New Hampshire. They were Betty and Barney Hill. At the time in question, the Hills were driving home from a vacation in Canada, when the journey suddenly took on strange and unearthly proportions.  It was on a dark stretch of road that the Hills caught sight of a curious light in the sky; it even seemed to be monitoring or shadowing them. They watched it for a while, and then something really strange happened: the Hills became confused, experienced a sense of missing time – of several hours, no less – and after getting home suffered from weird and traumatic dreams. They were dreams which suggested Betty and Barney may have been taken on-board the craft and even experimented on by weird-looking, humanoid figures. In no time at all, the dreams became definitive nightmares. Something had to be done. And, it was.

Betty and Barney Hill

When things got really bad for the Hills, and the nightmares and stress began to overwhelm them (Barney, for example, developed stomach ulcers), they sought help; it was a very good idea, as that same help led to answers for what happened on that mystery-filled drive back to New Hampshire. They were put in touch with a neurologist and psychiatrist who operated out of Boston, Massachusetts, named Benjamin Simon. Clearly aware that the Hills were in deep states of anxiety, he elected to subject them to regressive hypnosis – with the permission of Betty and Barney, of course. What followed next can only be described as incredible. Both husband and wife told near-identical stories of being taken from their vehicle, onto what can only be described as an unidentified flying object, and subjected to a series of medical procedures – most of which were very intrusive and stressful. Frightening, even. The encounter went on for roughly two hours. So detailed were the memories of Betty and Barney that the time Benjamin Simon worked with the Hills went on for months. Such was the phenomenal reaction to the story of Betty and Barney Hill, it prompted author John Fuller to write a book on the subject, titled The Interrupted Journey – an appropriate title, indeed – and which was published in 1966. Since then, the alien abduction phenomenon has grown and grown and spread like wildfire.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong at all about giving up meat and / or candy. And being concerned for the Earth is vital. After all, we have nowhere else to go if we irreversibly fuck up our world. But, just like the rapid diet-changing, I’ve seen the environmental angle placed into the person’s mind in a very quick time. too. Hours, even. At the latest, overnight. The undeniable zeal that goes along with this is not a bad thing. But, I do wonder if this sudden change in lifestyle is down to the primary themes of these three, interconnected articles: infiltration and control. There’s something else, too, that comes into play. I know of people who have been kidnapped by E.T.s , subjected to downright trauma, and shown images of a ravaged Earth in the near future. But, they still have a positive, emotional connection to their abductors. In many cases, abductees are the victims of Stockholm Syndrome – which I’ll get to now.

The BBC says of Stockholm Syndrome: “The term is most associated with Patty Hearst, the Californian newspaper heiress who was kidnapped by revolutionary militants in 1974. She appeared to develop sympathy with her captors and joined them in a robbery. She was eventually caught and received a prison sentence. But Hearst’s defence lawyer Bailey claimed that the 19-year-old had been brainwashed [my italics] and was suffering from ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ – a term that had been recently coined to explain the apparently irrational feelings of some captives for their captors [italics mine].” You can clearly see where I’m going with all of this. I know many people whose lives have been enriched by their abductions and their abductors. The fact is, though, this still all smacks of control and manipulation of the targeted person.