Archive for the ‘spooky’ category

MonsterQuest S5, Ep. 6 – -“Domestic Disturbance”

February 15, 2026

The Ohio Grassman was kind of featured in Episode 6 of Season 5 of MonsterQuest, which also touched upon some similar Bigfoot subspecies, and padded the hour out with paranormal stories about Amityville and even “time slips.”

Now the Grassman who had previously been covered during Season 2, Episode 4 of MonsterQuest has been previously reported since the 19th century, and is said to make large dens of grass and sticks from which his name is derived. Standing seven to ten feet tall, the Grassman weighs between 300 to 1,000 lbs…

In Galena, Ohio in 2017, a man went walking his Doberman near dusk when a black thing jumped from a ridge to a bush, throwing a rock and then a tree branch at him. Other branches followed, and the man walked through a creek to retreat back to his house. The creature or creatures followed, knocking over his pool furniture, deforming a chain link fence, and knocking underneath a deck that he was standing upon. He later found 15″ foot impressions in his mulch bed…

The Spottsville Monster plagued a family at an isolated farm in Kentucky near the banks of the Green River. In 1975, chickens began disappearing from the farm, with strange noises heard in the field. A chained goat was later taken, with the chain broken. A pony and dogs were also killed. While waiting for a school bus, a large 9 to 10 foot tall creature was seen. The property owners decided to dig in, and with friends and neighbors laid in wait upon a rooftop, firing upon creatures heard in the surrounding woods one evening…

In the Amityville, New York site of the infamous slaughter of an entire family in 1974, the killer contended that “voices within the house made me do it.” The subsequent occupant of the house in 1975 reported seeing two red eyes in the boat house of the property, and later a horned figure’s head seen in a fire. A giant white hooded figure was later seen on a staircase, and the front door was torn from its hinges. These accounts were apparently given as illustrations of hostile presences invading domestic places, although the invaders were more demonic than biological entities.

An encounter with the Fouke Monster in Arkansas in May of 1971 was touched upon, described as being a massive, hair-covered beast. It was speculated that the creature may be following rivers that connect the mid-west. In Southern Indiana a girl with her dog in an isolated setting reported locking eyes with a seven-foot tall ape-like creature with tangled, reddish-brown hair. She fled the site, the next day seeing footprints in the mud that convinced her that she had seen the Fouke Monster…

Although it didn’t seem congruent with the other stories, the last segment of the hour touched upon time slips, a reported paranormal phenomenon where a person unexpectedly travels to a different time period. These often fleeting experiences typically involve witnessing or temporarily existing in a past (or even future) era without using technology, often accompanied by a sense of dread or environmental change. At times a personal awareness appears to be gained by the experience. A 1996 case was cited in Liverpool, England where a then-contemporary person time-slipped into the 1950’s, noting the change in vehicles and stores present…

A 1981 case in South Carolina was touched upon where a young woman in a farmhouse was admonished not to go into a front room, but left alone ventured into that room to observe through a window a man on a tractor in a different season hit on the head by a tractor part. Years later, she learned that her great uncle had died from an accident on a tractor in that location…Spooky, but not fitting in well with the other segments…

“Grave Mistakes,” MonsterQuest S5, Ep 5

January 31, 2026

MonsterQuest at times as in the present episode appears conflicted as to whether it wants to be a Monster show, or a Spooky show. As a result, we sometimes are served up a “Monster Mash” of sorts, a mixture of cryptozoology and paranormal recounts. Perhaps though, you like Igor in the novelty song may exclaim, “Mash good!” It’s just that some of these stories you might want to send to Ghostbusters…

Submitted then for your approval is the terrifying tale of two teens in Michigan City in 1997 at kind of an outdoor party by railroad tracks who saw a 7′ shadow person following the passing of a train. They had the sense of something creeping up on them. Leaving, it appeared that something had left with them, with one teen dreaming of the shadow figure. Returning later to the scene of their encounter, one felt that the atmosphere there changed after another train passed, and perceived something pitch black behind him. He challenged the entity to show itself, and later could feel its presence in his dreams, unable to shake its presence. Again challenging the shadow (big mistake!), he felt it jump on his chest, and felt himself levitated before being thrown down. He called out to God at that point, felt a warmth, and heard the shadow entity scream and then depart. His sleep and mental health improved thereafter…

Now in Harrisville, Rhode Island in the early 1970’s, we have a recounting of a story that inspired The Conjuring. A family in 1971 moved into a 200-year-old farmhouse unaware of its dark history. The woman felt a pain in her leg, finding a small wound. Objects were seen to fly across the room, and snarling was heard in the shadows. Well, the Warrens were hired, a paranormal investigation team that held a seance at the house in October of 1973. The woman fell into a deep trance at that seance, and spoke in a foreign language. Paranormal activity spiked after that seance, with the woman feeling her throat squeezed by an invisible hand at one point. By 1980 the family had had enough, and put the farmhouse up for sale. The decision to hold a seance was felt to have intensified spiritual activity…

Now we leave Spooky Town, and go to the Wind River Mountains in Wyoming where in the summer of 1972 , a large hairy primate was seen by 25 people. A wildlife biologist had the misfortune of sleeping in a tent whose previous occupant had spilled bacon grease upon the tent fabric. At 11:30 one night, the biologist heard something outside of the tent which proceeded to lick the bacon grease from outside of the tent! Thinking that the bacon had lured a bear, the plucky biologist bopped the presumed bear on what he thought was its nose from within the tent! This happened twice, but the ‘bear” didn’t retreat far, stood on two legs, and was seen to be taller than the tent. The creature was then determined not to be a bear as it put its hand on the top of the tent, through which an opposable thumb was seen! The top of the tent collapsed under the weight, and the now-presumed Bigfoot creature fell through, apparently on top of the biologist with only tent fabric separating them! Fortunately the Bigfoot was disturbed enough by this experience to simply retreat back to a wooded area…

No physical evidence of the Bigfoot’s presence was found at that time, but upon returning to his supervisor the biologist learned that numerous people had reported a large, hairy primate running around in the area. The biologist did a study, and found a number of hair samples which were sent for analysis. They were found to be primate hair, but of an unknown species

Then in Silver Springs, Florida in the summer of 1976, a mother and daughter were camped out near a swamp area. The daughter went out to practice animal calls, imitating the call of a baby alligator. Later inside their camper, an unbearable smell heralded the appearance of a small hand with black hair at the window. The hand scratched at the window, and then the camper was shoved; the camper doorknob of the camper door was turned. A second adult creature then appeared and screamed, slapping the juvenile animal who cried, and departing with him. Blood and hair were found on the camper’s license plate, and researchers reported other sightings of the Swamp Ape…

The last story concerned teens who celebrated a birthday party in October of 2007 with a ouija board which reportedly moved over a period of 1-1/2 hours. Three months later, they went to deliver a gift in an isolated section of mountains, experiencing feelings of dread and seeing something 8-1/2′ tall with red eyes and long fingers clawing up the side of a mountain. Standing up, it pursued them, but they were able to escape in a parent’s vehicle. Posting of their experience many years later on social media, other people reported having seen such a creature, which they felt was summoned by the spirit board, or at least made aware of their presence by it…

As the episode warned in closing, when we reach into the darkness, we can’t ever control what reaches back… and who ‘ya gonna call?

A Halloween Nod to “Witch Hazel…”

October 30, 2025

With Halloween nigh, I thought it might be appropriate to pay a Foxsylvania tribute to Witch Hazel, one of Warner Bros. mildly darker characters lightened by her humor and self-parody of witches in general. Witch Hazel is almost reminiscent of the Warner Bros. character of Granny, but turned slightly to the dark side…

Created by Chuck Jones in 1956, Witch Hazel was reportedly inspired by the witches of Shakespeare in Macbeth, but considerably more comic. Viewers knew that Witch Hazel would never actually eat children, nor defeat Bugs Bunny. Hansel and Gretel did actually appear in Bewitched Bunny featuring Witch Hazel, but Bugs handily thwarted her, masquerading as a truant officer to gain access to the witch’s abode. Hazel then tried to feed Bugs a poisoned carrot, but that didn’t go as planned for her, either…he’s apparently unintentionally rescued by Prince Charming in another crossover from fairy tales!

At the end of that episode, Bugs employs an accessed magic powder to turn the witch into a rather winsome female rabbit, walking off arm in arm with her. Breaking the fourth wall to address the viewing audience, Bugs informs us that he knows that this is a witch, but asks us if they (females) aren’t all witches inside! (*breath-taking gasp!*) Dialogue like this would probably not pass muster in today’s politically correct age…

( I don’t care, the female rabbit is still hawt! )

Lady Gaga’s “The Dead Dance…”

September 4, 2025

Lady Gaga has given us all of us Halloween heads a great early gift for spooky season in The Dead Dance, a masterpiece of song and dance. It ranks up there with Michael Jackson’s Thriller and Wednesday’s dance from the Netflix series Wednesday. There are some Jacksonian moves to it, yet the production, directed by Tim Burton, is unique and distinctly Lady Gaga’s.

For one thing, the video incorporates the feeling of Mexico City’s Island of the Dolls, a place where aging, discolored, rotting, and dismembered dolls are strung up in trees and around the landscape. Such dolls are rather creepy, and appear right from the beginning of Lady Gaga’s video wheas such does not appear in Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Lady Gaga’s zombified dead also seem to do a lot more twitching as they hover in that nether world between death and a recall to life…

Is there anything that Lady Gaga cannot do? She sings, dances, and writes songs, and The Dead Dance can easily be interpreted to represent recovery from romantic break-ups, depression, and other forms of mental illness and personal setbacks in life. Although its topic is dark and presented in terms of the paranormal, the video is both dazzling and yet uplifting…what a triumph! Enjoy, if this is your first viewing of the video…

Happy Halloween from Foxsylvania!

October 31, 2024

Hello, Boils and Ghouls, and welcome to this special Halloween Edition of Foxsylvania! Halloween is special to me, always has been and always will be. It’s an occasion relatively free of suffocating family obligations and not awash in commercialism, a time of imagination and dipping into the dark corners of our psyche…here there be dragons! So gather ’round, kiddies, and let your Uncle Vulpes bring you items to thrill, chill, and amaze you…(well, maybe, just a little!) This is what we mean by, Cheap Thrills…

That’s it…come closer as I begin to be fired up, and my true form I share with you! For I am both man and beast, substance and shadow, flame and air…that’s really what a firefox is! I am fox, I am feral, and I am DANGEROUS! (Cue up that Michael Jackson number, please…)

(Firefox dancing with dark animal spirits to Dangerous…)

Brief, all too brief is All Hallow’s Eve when we can take off the masks that society makes us wear to please others. Join me in this dark dance of kindred furry spirits! It is a fine kind of madness that we enjoy as we gyrate and spin faster and faster, until the dancers become the dance!

Prepare for “Spooky Season!”

August 22, 2024