Brent Swancer

It is a dark night and the landscape leaps out of the pitch blackness into the beams of the car’s headlights, everything else just an indistinct blur of greys and half-glimpsed shapes, perhaps frosted by moonlight, perhaps not. The trees crowd around the road in the passing light as well, seeming to reach their flickering tendrils and fingers outwards overhead, and there is a sense that anything could be crouched or lurking out in the gloom out there beyond this illuminated patch. Then up ahead something lurches, scurries, or skitters out of the murk, something the likes of which you have never seen disgorged from the forest into your lights and possibly your nightmares. As your mind struggles to make sense of what you have just seen and comprehend it, the thing is gone just as suddenly as it appeared, swallowed back up by the night. What was it? Where did it go? You don’t know, and there was no way for you to have possibly taken a picture.

Such reports are commonplace in cryptozoology, sightings made by people driving along at night minding their own business are numerous to the point that it is almost cliché. There was a time when such chance encounters with strange mystery creatures along the remote roadways of our world would have been nothing more than a scary yarn, with nothing to show for it, and confined to our imaginations, yet in more modern times the increasing use of dashboard mounted cameras in vehicles of all kinds has brought some of these strange, passing sightings into the light and captured them on video for all to see. No longer are such reports the realm of mere pure speculation, doubt, and wonder.

Perhaps one of the more well-known such pieces of mysterious footage was captured in 2009 in Lumpkin County, Georgia, in the United States. In the footage a Lumpkin County Sheriff’s Office deputy is driving along a lonely road in the Frogtown area at night bantering back and forth with a local named Mary Scott, who was along for the ride as a part of a Citizens Law Enforcement Academy program. As the two make their way through a dark landscape illuminated only by the vehicle’s headlights something runs across the road in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment. It is hard to see in the unenhanced version of the footage, and can take several viewings to catch, but it is something large and dark in color, seemingly bipedal, and very fleet of foot, and it is odd enough to elicit a shout of surprise from the deputy and genuine amazement from Scott, who also saw it. The two then turn the car around to go back and look for whatever it was, and Scott would later say of the odd encounter:

We were going about 55 mph on a curvy road. It was really late-after midnight, I think. We hadn’t passed any other cars, and this thing came out of nowhere. The officer hit the brakes and we both jumped out. We looked on both sides of the road but didn’t see anything, and we looked at each other kind-of like, ‘You saw that, didn’t you? I saw that.’

The officer can be seen in the footage getting out of the car and shining his flashlight around into the wilderness, but they are unable to figure out where the thing went or just what exactly it is they had just seen. The two can be heard speculating that it might just be some teenagers messing around, but they don’t seem to really believe that, and they continue to express bewilderment. They would later take a look at the dash cam footage they had captured and that was when things got decidedly more mysterious. The bizarre figure indeed seems to run on two legs, is quite fast, and does not appear to be of human proportions, although it is only visible for a fraction of a second. Upon seeing the strange footage Scott became convinced that they had witnessed something truly out of the ordinary, saying of the review of the footage “We were both just shocked. It was really tall, and it really looked like the pictures you’ve seen of Bigfoot.” Bigfoot or not, the reactions of the two witnesses certainly seem genuine and they seem to be convinced that they saw something weird.

When the footage was uncovered and posted on the Internet it immediately went viral, and there was intense speculation on what it could be. Was it a misidentified known animal, Bigfoot, a hoax? Debate and discussion swarmed about the footage, and all manner of cryptozoologists, paranormal investigators, and curiosity seekers came pouring into the area, to the point that Sheriff Stacy Jarrard decided to launch his own investigation into the strange sighting. Jarrard claims that he went interviewing residents of the area looking for any helpful testimony and apparently found it in two students at North Georgia College & State University, who he claims acted very nervous in his presence and allegedly eventually admitted that one of them had dressed up in a gorilla suit and prowled about as a prank on the night in question. It seemed like case closed, or was it?

Skeptics of these claims say that no hoaxers have officially stepped forward to publically claim responsibility for such a prank, and the picture that Jarrard said he took of the boys with the actual gorilla suit has yet to materialize, with Jarrard supposedly refusing all requests to release the elusive photo. It has also been pointed out that the area was very remote and that no one lived in the immediate vicinity, making it odd that the boys would be out there trouncing about in their suit on the off chance that someone would actually happen by. It also seems rather ill-advised to do so in the first place, as in this day and age and with armed people running around and hunters about it seems like wandering around the forest in a gorilla suit is just asking for trouble. I can see using a suit to make one’s own fake video, but the deputy was seemingly not in on this, and walking around pranking unknown people with a gorilla suit in Bigfoot country being the death wish it is, it seems foolish at best. Does anyone really do this?

Adding to the whole odd affair, a 2011 Animal Planetdocumentary group also investigated and confirmed that no teenagers had lived anywhere near the area at the time, making it strange that they should be there, and interestingly when other sheriff’s department personnel were interviewed none of them had any knowledge of Jarrard’s supposed investigation. It seems the only source we have for any of Jarrard’s “investigation” is Jarrard himself, which is a bit suspicious and has led to the idea that he is the one pulling a fast one, possibly to keep people from coming in to snoop about. A BFRO (Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization) statement on the matter reads:

None of the other sheriffs had heard about this story that Jarrard told to a reporter. It seems he came up with the story to quell any fear that local people might have about a monster in the woods, and to prevent hunters from going to look for one.

As far as anyone knows, the two boys might not even exist, and if they do the only one they have admitted a hoax to is Jarrard himself. There has also been quite a bit of analysis done on the video clip by those who claim that the creature seen in the footage seems to be moving much faster and more fluidly than what would typically be expected of a teenager in a gorilla suit, with one estimate saying the thing appears to move at about 10 meters (40 feet) in 1.4 seconds. However, obviously this is hard to determine because whatever it is can only very briefly be seen, and even with enhancements made to the footage it is indistinct, blurry and undeniably hard to make out. It is certainly dark, probably bipedal, and man-sized or larger, but it is difficult to glean much else from the video, meaning that the footage will remain inconclusive, with those watching it divided as to what exactly it shows. You can see the dash cam footage here, with enhancements at the end.

A very similar piece of weird dashboard camera footage that has made the rounds emerged in 2016, and comes to us from Russia’s icy Kazhakstan border, in an area between the Volga River and the Ural Mountains called the Republic of Bashkortostan. The video features two men driving at night along a snowy road in what appears to be a rather isolated and remote area, and they are chatting away in Russian about, well I’m not exactly sure as I cannot speak Russian but it seems like just friendly banter. Around 45 seconds into the video they are noticeably shocked when a large figure lumbers across the road ahead right into the beams of the car’s headlights.

The two startled men chatter away in the universal language of befuddled shouts of amazement and fear, and frantically stop the car and reverse to see if they can figure out what the strange creature was, but whatever it is they saw is gone by then. The witnesses claim that the area they were in is very remote, the weather had been inhospitable and frigid at the time, and that it would be unlikely that someone would have been out there pulling pranks on such a night. They have also dismissed the idea that they may have seen a bear or some wild animal, with driver Vadim Gilmanov stating:

I mean it could have been someone’s cruel prank. But on the other hand, who else could dash out so quickly in the middle of the night? In the middle of nowhere.

As with the Lumpkin footage the creature, hoaxer, or whatever it is, is visible only very briefly, and is not clearly defined. It could be practically anything, but the clip is oddly intriguing nonetheless. You can see it here. Staying with the bizarre humanoid theme we come to what is perhaps one of the most talked about pieces of footage in recent days, this time not from a car’s dash cam but from a helmet cam worn by a biker in Indonesia in 2017.

The footage comes from the helmet camera of one of a group of off-road motocross bikers tearing along a dirt road surrounded thick jungle and high grass near Banda Aceh, north of Sumatra Island. At one point one of the riders loses control of his bike and falls, and it soon becomes obvious why, as it appears that a peculiar figure has scurried out of the wilderness onto the road to startle the rider into crashing his bike. The rest of the bikers slow down to see that the unidentified creature is short, no more than 4 or 5 feet tall, bald, and half naked, holding some sort of pole or spear, and looks to be a humanoid of some kind, but before anyone can get a good look it sprints off at a surprising speed.

A still from the strange footage showing the humanoid

The group immediately gives chase on their motorcycles but the humanoid runs along the road very quickly and then loses them by veering off into the high grassland, prompting the pursuers to stop their bikes and look for it on foot but all they can find is the strange pole it had been carrying discarded upon the ground. The creature itself is nowhere to be seen despite all frantic attempts to locate it by the puzzled witnesses. The strange footage set the Internet on fire when it was first released, baffling all those who saw it. What was this diminutive little humanoid and where did it come from? No one really knows, but there have been theories. One is that this could be actual footage of an Indonesian cryptid hairy hominid called the Orang Pendek, which is reported from Sumatra and is also claimed to be only around 3 to 5 feet tall, but the lack of any apparent body hair at all on the subject of the footage makes it look more like a human than a hairy ape man of any sort.

Considering its similarities to a human being and its small stature, there has also been the idea that this could be a member of a previously thought to be a lost tribe of mysterious pygmies called the Mante, who are only known through two that were supposedly captured in the 17th century to be presented to the Sultan. There are other tribes present in the region as well, although none that really resemble what was seen in the footage. Of course there has also been the idea that this was all a hoax, but in the end despite millions of views and constant discussion, debate, and analysis of the footage it remains a total mystery. You can see it here.

The Orang Pendek

Whatever it was or wherever it went, I’m sure it wanted its stick back. Speaking of that stick, one thing I wonder about with this case is what happened to it? It seems to me that this is a major piece of evidence that was actually retrieved and could hold profound clues as to what or who we see in the footage. If the design and any markings on the stick were consistent with other tribes of the area, then that would pretty much settle everything, and if it is a new kind of pygmy or hominid then this artifact could offer all sorts of interesting insights, yet I cannot find any information at all as to what has become of it or if it was ever seriously studied. So where did the stick go? Did the bikers keep it? Did they just throw it away? It seems to be just as big a mystery as the little humanoid itself.

Adding to all of the dash cam videos of purported hairy humanoids is one that is purported to show a mysterious canid creature of some sort roaming about in South Texas. In 2008, Texas Sheriff deputy Brandon Riedel was out in his patrol car training a new deputy in DeWitt County in a rural area near the city of Cuero when they came across a bizarre creature trotting along the side of the road near a fence line. The mysterious animal looks to be a canine of some sort, and has short front legs with longer back legs, a hairless body, a long, thin snout, and a skinny, rat-like tail. Reidel would say of the bizarre sighting:

I’ve been patrolling these back roads for a long time and I never run across anything like this. We were out checking fence lines and we came around the corner and we saw this running down the road. You need to record something like this because it’s not every day you find something that looks like this running around out in the middle of the county. It just doesn’t look like your average coyote or dog or anything.

A still from the Cuero Chupacabras dash cam video

The sighting and the footage generated a huge amount of interest at the time, particularly since the area where it was taken was going through a spate of sightings of strange, hairless dog-like creatures roaming the region that had gained the nickname “The Cuero Chupacabras,” which were said to sometimes kill pets or livestock and frighten people at night. There has been a lot of speculation as to what the creature in the dashcam footage and the Cureo Chupacabras could be, including that they are just coyotes or dogs with some skin condition such as mange, which can cause the hair to fall out to dramatically alter their appearance, or that they are hybrids of coyotes, wolves, and dogs or even aliens or really Chupacabras. Whatever the thing is in this footage, it is certainly creepy and a bit unsettling as well in a way. You can see it featured in a news report here.

It seems that as more and more people use cameras and the technology becomes more readily available we can expect more of such pieces of mysterious footage. After all there are fewer and fewer excuses for people to use the old excuse of “if only I’d had a camera.” Almost everything we witness today can now be captured in photos and on videos, and there are fewer ways for these mysteries to escape being seen and analyzed by the masses. There are few shadows to hide in anymore. Vehicles are not much different, as more and more utilize dash cams to catch everything that happens on the road. This might not be the best way to capture video evidence of strange creatures, since the very nature of these circumstances makes the sightings fleeting at best, and it is perhaps no surprise that by the time the vehicle turns around to get a better look the creature is long gone, yet it certainly does add a tool to the photographic chronicles of the world of the mysterious and will no doubt keep us wondering.

According to a batch of files that the U.K.’s National Archive declassified a number of years ago, Dame Rebecca West, MBE, was inadvertently plunged into a very strange puzzle in early 1966. Incredibly, she asserted, some sort of unusual aerial object, had landed in the grounds of her home – Ibstone House. For its part, the files reveal, the Ministry of Defense (MoD) suggested that West had simply misidentified a helicopter seen under poor conditions (which may well have been the case). Whatever the truth of the matter, West’s odd experience became the subject of a fifteen-page file that attracted the attention of the MoD’s Defense Intelligence Staff.

Born in 1892, Rebecca West (the adopted name of Cicily Isabel Fairfield) was the daughter of Charles Fairfield, who was renowned in London society. West took on the name of Rebecca at the age of nineteen after Ibsen’s heroine in Rosmersholm. She trained briefly for the stage in London, before becoming a noted feminist and journalist. As her career blossomed, West wrote for The Freewoman, The Clarion and The New Freewoman, and many of her writings from that time were re-printed as The Young Rebecca in 1932.

Her first novel, The Return of the Soldier, was published in 1918 and was followed by The Judge, The Strange Necessity, and Harriet June. In 1930 West married Henry Maxwell Andrews, a banker, who was to accompany her on the journey that ultimately led to the publication of her two-volume study of the Yugoslav nation, The Black Lamb and Grey Falcon.

West was present at the Nuremburg trials and her 1949 book, The Meaning of Treason, largely grew out of articles commissioned by The New Yorker. In 1965, only one year before her curious UFO encounter occurred, West’s The Meaning of Treason was updated with added accounts of what were then more recent scandals (including those of John Vassall, a spy in the Admiralty sentenced to eighteen years imprisonment, and Stephen Ward, a player in the Profumo case). But how did Dame Rebecca West become embroiled in the UFO controversy? As the old documentation at the U.K.’s National Archives reveals, it was 2.45 p.m. on 7 January 1966 and West was out walking in the grounds of her home when…

“As I was going down the steep hill to the farm buildings I noticed a man walking on my property at some distance to the right of the path I was following,” she wrote to the MoD. “Presently, he reached a point when the wood stopped and there is a hedge which runs down to the valley along a sharp ridge. There is a gap in the hedge and the man stopped just past this and turned around, facing in the reverse direction, and stood still.”

Expressing concern about “what he was going to do,” West watched in amazement as what she described as “an aerial construction” appeared out of nowhere. “One moment it was not there, the next it was,” Rebecca West explained. “It seemed to come down quite rapidly, on the other side of the hedge from the man, but very close to it.” And what, precisely, was it that Dame Rebecca West saw? Her description was curious, to say the least.

Stressing to the MoD that the object was “strangely shaped,” she stated: “It consisted of something like a metal band, grey-blue in color, flattened at one point so as to seem almost leaf-like, crossed with a sort of herringbone system of metal strips.” She elaborated further: “There was also somehow attached to these an odd object like a bag with an opening that had points, made of yellowish material. As I looked the whole thing collapsed toward the ground.

“I saw it crumpling downwards, but crumpling is not quite the word. The metal band seemed to cut backwards and disappear while the curious bag looked as if someone were squeezing the air out of the lower portion of it, so that all the points stood up, and then fell back. Comparing the height of the object with the height of the man, I should put it as something [between] fifteen and twenty.”

Also playing on West’s mind was the identity of the mystery man. Stressing that his behavior was “very odd,” she continued that “he seemed to be watching the thing come down, and the minute it was down, he turned round and followed the hedge track down to the valley. Once or twice he looked to his left as if he were scrutinizing the valley, and he did not seem to see me. But at the bottom of the track he stopped again and looked all round the slope on which I was standing, and this time he seemed to see me. We stood and looked at each other for quite a long time, and I had an uncomfortable feeling and went home.”

The key question centered on the identity of the strange object. In her letter to the Ministry of Defense, West wrote that a farm laborer had informed her that he had seen a helicopter flying in the vicinity earlier on that same day. West, meanwhile, ventured the possibility that it was “some gadget sent out by the Meteorological Office.” Rebecca West signed off: “I feel most apologetic for burdening you with such an improbable story. But I did not like to report it to the local police, as I think you will agree that an elderly woman who went to the local police with a story of having seen the equivalent of a flying saucer would be adding considerably to the difficulties of her life.”

On arrival at the MoD, West’s letter (and accompanying drawing) was forwarded to a particular office known to have been involved in the collation of UFO data in the 1960s and referred to as s4f (Air). As the records show, however, one L.W. Akhurst of that office then dispatched all of the relevant data to a Flight Lieutenant Mercer of the Defense Intelligence Staff. For his part, Mercer was inclined to accept that, “Dame Rebecca West saw a helicopter, possibly of the Bell 47 or similar type, which in conditions of poor visibility appeared to have some unusual characteristics.”

West was far from convinced by the MoD’s explanation and fired a letter back to Ackhurst. “To have appeared where I saw it a helicopter would have had to fly twenty or thirty yards with its lower half deeply embedded in the earth.” She also maintained that: “There was at this time complete silence,” and that “visibility seemed to me not poor at all, for I spotted several birds at a considerable distance. I do not expect an answer to this letter.”

West concluded: “I reported the incident partly because I feared the object might be a parachute or some such construction which was being used to drop something or somebody for criminal purposes, and partly because the construction I saw or thought I saw puzzled me, as I could not conceive how it could be got into the air, could stay in the air, or be brought down out of the air.”

Akhurst’s response was short and to the point. “No further evidence has become available concerning this particular sighting, so there is nothing further I can add.” The case was closed. For its part, the Ministry of Defense seemed satisfied with the explanation that the object was simply a helicopter – and its staff did indeed make a good case for the craft being a helicopter. However, West’s letters clearly demonstrate that she had dismissed the notion that the object was a helicopter (“I have seen many in my time, and I can’t imagine how I could have seen a helicopter from any angle which would have made it present such an appearance,” she stated). She had also given much consideration to the idea that the object was some form of man-made “gadget.” Yet, she was equally well aware of the fact that her report seemed to fall squarely into the Flying Saucer category too. And there was also the glaring observation on her part that the object had been flying in total silence.

Dame Rebecca West continued to write with vigor almost until the time of her death at the age of ninety in 1983, and her contribution to British literature is more than well recognized. It seems that more than half a century on, however, this particularly curious aspect of her notable life will remain forever unresolved.

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