FOXSYLVANIA

Episode 8 of Season 5 of MonsterQuest deviated from previous installments of the revived series in that it focused entirely on aliens, and had the flavor at times of being an X-Files episode. I almost expected to see Fox Mulder make an appearance, but regretfully he did not. I liked this change of pace from the usual cryptid coverage, usually featuring Bigfoot in varying forms. I only take issue with space-faring aliens being categorized as Monsters, when I regard them as advanced life forms…

Anyways, the episode featured “accounts of people who claim they were stalked, attacked or even taken by threats from beyond our world, because not all monsters come from the woods – sometimes they come from ABOVE!” Alright, I’m all in for this one, but why must we call possible aliens “Monsters?”

The show kicked off with the story of the “Allagash Four,” four Boston college students who claimed that they were abducted by aliens. Going on a planned week-long camping trip in Allagash, Maine in August of 1976, the four young men set up by Eagle Lake, using a canoe for night fishing on their fourth night there. They felt a sensation that they were being watched, and saw a ball of light rising behind them that had a “rolling effect” to it. They waved a flashlight at it, after which a beam of light reportedly came out of the orb and illuminated them. Terrified, they started paddling back to shore, and had almost made it there when suddenly everything went black! Their next memory was of standing on the shoreline, with no idea of how they got there…

Thinking that they had only been gone an hour, it turned out that they had been gone for several hours, with no member of the group being able to account for the “missing time.” They went their own ways afterwards, graduating from college…but twelve years later, they experienced recurrent nightmares of being trapped in a room with strange beings having a long neck and big eyes. They reached out to an investigator, Ray Fowler, who put them under hypnosis separately. Each recounted being trapped on a gurney, paralyzed, while a panel was placed on their chests, and scrapings were taken from their arms and legs. A 1993 book on the abduction brought both wonder and doubt, but the men are standing by their abduction story…

Then in Fyffe, Alabama in 1989, 50 people reported seeing a triangular-shaped craft hovering in the sky in one of the most well-documented UFO mass sightings. The government contended that they had seen helicopters, but witnesses said that the object made no noise, and was completely silent. In a related case, one man’s father-in-law at night saw a light out in a field, walked up to it, and was hit by a beam of light that struck him in the forehead, rendering him unconscious. He woke up the next morning in the middle of the field with nothing around him…

Several apps exist supposedly to facilitate contact with extraterrestrials. A story was presented of a man who in 2014 used such an app to contact a large, 7′ to 8′ black alien with a large head and neck, and long arms. He passed out following his initial contact, but in the middle of the following night, heard a shrill, screeching sound outside of his window, thinking that his dog was killing some small animal there. Going outside to investigate, he beheld a silent light in the sky hanging there above the treeline. Shining his flashlight, he then saw the reported alien standing in the middle of the road, who was surprised and ran away. The man retreated to his house and stood guard with a pistol, hearing an all-consuming voice in his head that essentially said “If I wanted to kill you, you’d already be dead! Go back to sleep, NOW!” The man woke up the following morning, and his dog didn’t return for three days, behaviorally changed. The man regrets having initiated the “contact…”

References to “Little Green Men” that are now part of the language originated in a tobacco farm in Kelly, Kentucky in August of 1955. In an isolated, rural area a man went to get well water, and saw a small, silver object thirty to forty feet above him. Others from the household came to investigate, at which time a 3-1/2′ to 4′ figure came out from behind the house. The figure was related to have a big round head, long talons, and a luminescent green glow! Alarmingly, he hovered above the ground. While others ran inside the house, a grandmother then went outside to check things out for herself, screaming “I saw it!”

At this point, an uncle inside the house shot at the alien through the window… welcome to ‘Murica, right?! Gunfire didn’t seem to much faze the alien, and another was seen perched in a tree. Aliens then came up to the doors and windows of the house, and were met with welcoming gunfire. Lacking a phone or other means of outside communication, it was decided to send someone to the next town seven miles away for help, where that person went to the local police department that in turn summoned about two dozen responders to go to the house in the middle of the night…

Upon arrival the responders saw shotgun and rifle shells all over the yard and in the house, and searched but found no bodies or blood, human or alien. Saying that there was nothing that they could do, the police departed. The family was sworn to secrecy by the father, but the next morning many gawking newcomers came in cars, wanting to see the “little green men.” A local radio station came to interview members of the family individually, and their stories all agreed. Drawings were also made by family members that were consistent. State troopers the night of the incident had seen lights in the sky that they couldn’t explain, as had other people.

Project Blue Book actually reviewed the state police findings, and put surveillance aircraft in the air. Their results were inconclusive, but there was no evidence or indicators of a hoax, either. The case remains unresolved… 🤔

Also covered was the classic Travis Walton November 1975 UFO abduction, when a member of a six-man logging crew disappeared after being struck in the chest by a beam of light reportedly emitted by a UFO that he went to investigate. A massive manhunt found nothing, but five days later and 15 miles away from the site of the disappearance, the victim emerged, saying that he was abducted by aliens, and examined. The presumed abductee passed numerous polygraph tests. A book and a 1993 movie were made of Walton’s reported experience…

Some reported alien abductees have presented with red dots in a triangular pattern on their skin. The spring of 2022 case of a retired policeman was examined where he first woke one morning to find numerous marks on his foot that disappeared the following morning. Two weeks later, the man had the sensation of being dropped on his bed, opening his eyes to to see three glowing beings in shining gold color that emitted light; they gradually faded from sight. The man compared the experience to coming out of anesthesia. He told his wife, and had three red dots in a triangular pattern on his skin although no memories of how they got there. Regression therapy was sought from a hypnotherapist, uncovering memories of being put on a table and covered with a gel blanket by a gold being with black eyes who sent low voltage jolts through the gel blanket into him. He reported having a telepathic communication from the alien in which he was asked “how do you feel?” One alien tapped a spot on his arm, and then he was back in his room, looking at the alien; the abductee’s memories ended there. He asked the therapist if his experience was a dream, and she contended that it was a repressed memory…

Oregon has long been a UFO hotspot, with over 3,600 UFO sightings reported there since 1974. In one of the most famous, a farmer on a quiet farm near McMinnville snapped photos of a strange flying object hovering over his property. The photos actually appeared in Life magazine, but scientists later concluded that the object was likely a small model hanging from a wire. Many still believe that the farmer captured something unexplained, and the area now hosts one of the largest UFO festivals in the U.S.!

In another Oregon case from 2019, a woman sitting outside noticed a smoke-like circular cloud which contracted into a humanoid figure with large eyes and a pointed chin. He walked down a pathway, apparently not perceiving her. Retreating into her house where her children were, the woman went about shutting her blinds, seeing while so doing the same humanoid figure in a vacant apartment across the street! She called her sister, who advised her to take a picture. The woman did so through the blinds, feeling that the alien was staring back at her. The alien never reappeared…

So there you go, faithful readers! Just remember that not all aliens are monsters, and may regard us as interesting primitives…