THE PARACAST NEWSLETTER
August 25, 2013
The Paracast Explores the Iowa Mothman
The Paracast is heard Sundays from 2:00 AM until 5:00 AM Central Time on the GCN Radio Network and affiliates around the USA, and online across the globe via download and on-demand streaming.
Why It's Important for You to Donate to The Paracast: Although ads help cover a small part of our expenses, the income they produce is never enough to pay your humble hosts decent wages. Also, we do not receive any revenue from the ads placed on the show by our network or local stations. So we hope you're able to help fill the gap, if you can, to help us cover increasing server costs and other expenses -- or perhaps provide a little extra cash for lunch and utility bills. No contribution is too small (or too large
. It’s easy to send a donation. We have aDonate link on our home page, below the logo and audio player. There's also a Donate link on our forums, at the bottom of the sidebar on the right. Or just send your PayPal donation direct to sales (at) theparacast (dot) com. And if you’ve had a problem getting to our Donate screen, please try again. We just fixed a serious PayPal access problem, and it should wor k properly now.
Attention U.S. Listeners: Help Us Bring The Paracast to Your City! In the summer of 2010, The Paracast joined the GCN radio network. This represented a huge step in bringing our show to a larger, mainstream audience. But we need your help to add additional affiliates to our growing network. Please ask one of your local talk stations if they are interested in carrying The Paracast. Feel free to contact us directly with the names of programming people we might be able to contact on your behalf. We can't do this alone, and if you succeed in convincing your local station to carry the show, we'll reward you with one of our special T-shirts, and other goodies. With your help, The Paracast can grow into one of the most popular paranormal shows on the planet!
Please Visit Our Online Store: You asked, and we answered. We are now taking orders for The Official Paracast T-Shirt and an expanded collection of other specially customized merchandise. To get your T-Shirt now featuring our brand new logo, just pay a visit to our online store at The Official Paracast Store to select your size and place your order. We also offer a complete lineup of other premium merchandise for your family, your friends and your business contacts.
About The Paracast: The Paracast covers a world beyond science, where UFOs, poltergeists and strange phenomena of all kinds have been reported by millions across the planet.
Set Up: The Paracast is a paranormal radio show that takes you on a journey to a world beyond science, where UFOs, poltergeists and strange phenomena of all kinds have been reported by millions. The Paracast seeks to shed light on the mysteries and complexities of our Universe and the secrets that surround us in our everyday lives.
Join long-time paranormal researcher Gene Steinberg, co-host and acclaimed field investigator Christopher O'Brien, and a panel of special guest experts and experiencers, as they explore the realms of the known and unknown. Listen each week to the great stories of the history of the paranormal field in the 20th and 21st centuries.
This Week's Episode: Gene and Chris present Chad Lewis, a co-author of "The Van Meter Visitor: A True and Mysterious Encounter with the Unknown." According to Lewis, "for several nights in 1903, the small town of Van Meter, Iowa was terrorized by a giant bat-like creature that emerged from an old abandoned mine. The identity of this mysterious visitor was never discovered." Over 100 years later, Lewis and his fellow paranormal investigators set out to Van Meter to shine a light on this amazingly bizarre and still unexplained case.
Chris O'Brien's Site: http://www.ourstrangeplanet.com
The Van Meter Visitor Site: The Van Meter Visitor - A True & Mysterious Encounter With The Unknown
Reminder: Please don't forget to visit our famous Paracast Community Forums for the latest news/views/debates on all things paranormal: The Paracast Community Forums. We recently completed a major update that makes our community easier to navigate, and social network friendly.
Putting the Pieces Together on Paranormal Cold Cases
By Gene Steinberg
As many of you know, UFO investigator Kevin D. Randle and his “Dream Team” have been busy trying to put a new face on the Roswell UFO episode. Did a flying saucer really crash in the New Mexico desert in 1947? Or was something far more mundane involved?
Well, after exploring the incident for years, Randle and his colleagues hope that looking at the evidence anew might reveal previously undisclosed details.
It certainly hasn’t been an easy road to travel. The Roswell case essentially lay dormant after that famous newspaper story that first described a flying saucer crash, then changed the identity of the crashed object to a weather balloon. That, for all intents and purposes, was it; that is, until investigators Stanton T. Friedman, William L. Moore and best-selling author Charles Berlitz began to dig into the case, and found that there may have been more to it than originally believed. The results were published “The Roswell Incident,” which appeared in 1980.
So a sleepy New Mexico city became world famous, or infamous, as the reputed location of the crash of an extraterrestrial craft.
Now it’s not as if Roswell was necessarily a secret even before that book was published. If you actually went there and talked to the locals, you’d get a wealth of information, and that newspaper story was merely the start. In short, the residents knew something actually happened, although you can debate forever and a day what that something might have been.
Consider, also, a curious episode that occurred back in 1903 in Van Meter, Iowa, a former coal mining town with just a few hundred residents. Over a period of five days, says the local paper, people saw a large winged creature that may have resembled a bat. It might have even had a resemblance to the infamous West Virginia “Mothman,” although there was no local disaster connected to the creature’s appearance.
The townspeople prepared to send volunteers with weapons and torches, to take care of those pesky beasts, but they were gone, never to return.
According to the reports of the time, there may have been two creatures, and they seemed not only impervious to bullets, but could emit a gas that would cause people to lose their memories. In that, says Chad Lewis, a co-author of a new book “The Van Meter Visitor,” the case may have brought to mind some of the UFO abduction reports.
Well, when Lewis and his colleagues visited Van Meter, a local librarian was able to help them, pointing to the newspaper clippings of the day. Many of the townspeople were familiar with the creature sightings, which were witnessed, according to the newspaper stories, by some of the pillars of the town’s community, such as the mayor and the police chief. The story was even picked up by a number of papers around the country, although it appeared that some of the details were garbled, and some reports clearly didn’t take it very seriously.
Even though investigators have yet to uncover local diaries or other direct documentation aside from those newspaper clippings, it was clear that something strange apparently occurred 110 years ago in that tiny midwestern town.
Now obviously there are no living witnesses to the Van Meter monster, but you’d think there might be to the reported UFO crash at Aztec, NM in March of 1948. Indeed, Scott Ramsey’s recent book, “The Aztec Incident,” presents interviews with very few direct witnesses. Most of the testimony involves second or third-hand sources, and it is really difficult to separate the details from those published in the late Frank Scully’s controversial 1950 book, “Behind the Flying Saucers,” where the case was first disclosed.
The biggest problem is that the episode seems to begin with the Scully book. Critics claim that the author, a gossip columnist for Variety, depended on the testimony of two convinced con men, thus forever tainting the validity of the case.
But it’s also clear that Ramsey, and his co-authors, including his wife, Susanne, long-time investigator Frank Warren, and Dr. Frank Thayer, have faith in their material. The book is self-published, and there is no way sales will ever help cover the half million dollars Ramsey says he has invested in studying the Aztec case.
There remains a lot of skepticism about Aztec, however. Consider a three-part article from Monte Shriver, a former Aztec resident who was alive when the episode allegedly occurred. The detailed rebuttal to Ramsey’s book was posted early in 2013 on Kevin Randle’s blog, “A Different Perspective.” You can find links to all three here:A Different Perspective: Search results for aztec.
Now to some, this article is the nail in the coffin for Aztec. Shriver, an engineer by training, proceeds to dissect many of the salient reports in Ramsey’s book. Roads and bridges are in the wrong place, for example. Worse, he doesn’t personally know anyone who actually heard of the Aztec crash, outside of the Scully book. A student of Aztec High School, when he attended the 60th reunion, none of his classmates knew about a flying saucer crash there either.
Last I checked, Ramsey did not make an effort to refute the article, and that leaves the ball right back in his court. Sure, it’s possible the few witnesses he has located are telling the truth as they know it, and that something strange really occurred in Aztec in 1948 that the townspeople have conveniently forgotten, or somehow failed to notice. For now, however, I put this case in my personal gray basket.
The lingering problem, as our own Chris O’Brien and Kevin Randle state, is that there is no paper trail prior to the Scully book to rely on to demonstrate that something strange actually crash landed near Aztec in Hart Canyon. I realize you can’t prove a negative to a certainty, that it’s not possible to show that a flying saucer didn’t crash near Aztec. Maybe it was all somehow covered up by the military. Maybe the populace somehow remained ignorant of the original incident, or the alleged efforts by the military to retrieve the craft, break it down and transport it somewhere else.
When you look at the three cases, it seems certain that something clearly occurred at Roswell, though you can speculate as to the cause. A weird creature was clearly reported in the vicinity of Van Meter, although you can argue whether it was mass hysteria, or something else that was quite mundane. But with the Aztec UFO crash, you wonder if there is any there there. And that remains the question that’s still unresolved after all these years.
Copyright 1999-2013 Making The Impossible, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy: Your personal information is safe with us. We will positively never give out your name and/or e-mail address to anybody else, and that's a promise!
August 25, 2013
The Paracast Explores the Iowa Mothman
The Paracast is heard Sundays from 2:00 AM until 5:00 AM Central Time on the GCN Radio Network and affiliates around the USA, and online across the globe via download and on-demand streaming.
Why It's Important for You to Donate to The Paracast: Although ads help cover a small part of our expenses, the income they produce is never enough to pay your humble hosts decent wages. Also, we do not receive any revenue from the ads placed on the show by our network or local stations. So we hope you're able to help fill the gap, if you can, to help us cover increasing server costs and other expenses -- or perhaps provide a little extra cash for lunch and utility bills. No contribution is too small (or too large
. It’s easy to send a donation. We have aDonate link on our home page, below the logo and audio player. There's also a Donate link on our forums, at the bottom of the sidebar on the right. Or just send your PayPal donation direct to sales (at) theparacast (dot) com. And if you’ve had a problem getting to our Donate screen, please try again. We just fixed a serious PayPal access problem, and it should wor k properly now.Attention U.S. Listeners: Help Us Bring The Paracast to Your City! In the summer of 2010, The Paracast joined the GCN radio network. This represented a huge step in bringing our show to a larger, mainstream audience. But we need your help to add additional affiliates to our growing network. Please ask one of your local talk stations if they are interested in carrying The Paracast. Feel free to contact us directly with the names of programming people we might be able to contact on your behalf. We can't do this alone, and if you succeed in convincing your local station to carry the show, we'll reward you with one of our special T-shirts, and other goodies. With your help, The Paracast can grow into one of the most popular paranormal shows on the planet!
Please Visit Our Online Store: You asked, and we answered. We are now taking orders for The Official Paracast T-Shirt and an expanded collection of other specially customized merchandise. To get your T-Shirt now featuring our brand new logo, just pay a visit to our online store at The Official Paracast Store to select your size and place your order. We also offer a complete lineup of other premium merchandise for your family, your friends and your business contacts.
About The Paracast: The Paracast covers a world beyond science, where UFOs, poltergeists and strange phenomena of all kinds have been reported by millions across the planet.
Set Up: The Paracast is a paranormal radio show that takes you on a journey to a world beyond science, where UFOs, poltergeists and strange phenomena of all kinds have been reported by millions. The Paracast seeks to shed light on the mysteries and complexities of our Universe and the secrets that surround us in our everyday lives.
Join long-time paranormal researcher Gene Steinberg, co-host and acclaimed field investigator Christopher O'Brien, and a panel of special guest experts and experiencers, as they explore the realms of the known and unknown. Listen each week to the great stories of the history of the paranormal field in the 20th and 21st centuries.
This Week's Episode: Gene and Chris present Chad Lewis, a co-author of "The Van Meter Visitor: A True and Mysterious Encounter with the Unknown." According to Lewis, "for several nights in 1903, the small town of Van Meter, Iowa was terrorized by a giant bat-like creature that emerged from an old abandoned mine. The identity of this mysterious visitor was never discovered." Over 100 years later, Lewis and his fellow paranormal investigators set out to Van Meter to shine a light on this amazingly bizarre and still unexplained case.
Chris O'Brien's Site: http://www.ourstrangeplanet.com
The Van Meter Visitor Site: The Van Meter Visitor - A True & Mysterious Encounter With The Unknown
Reminder: Please don't forget to visit our famous Paracast Community Forums for the latest news/views/debates on all things paranormal: The Paracast Community Forums. We recently completed a major update that makes our community easier to navigate, and social network friendly.
Putting the Pieces Together on Paranormal Cold Cases
By Gene Steinberg
As many of you know, UFO investigator Kevin D. Randle and his “Dream Team” have been busy trying to put a new face on the Roswell UFO episode. Did a flying saucer really crash in the New Mexico desert in 1947? Or was something far more mundane involved?
Well, after exploring the incident for years, Randle and his colleagues hope that looking at the evidence anew might reveal previously undisclosed details.
It certainly hasn’t been an easy road to travel. The Roswell case essentially lay dormant after that famous newspaper story that first described a flying saucer crash, then changed the identity of the crashed object to a weather balloon. That, for all intents and purposes, was it; that is, until investigators Stanton T. Friedman, William L. Moore and best-selling author Charles Berlitz began to dig into the case, and found that there may have been more to it than originally believed. The results were published “The Roswell Incident,” which appeared in 1980.
So a sleepy New Mexico city became world famous, or infamous, as the reputed location of the crash of an extraterrestrial craft.
Now it’s not as if Roswell was necessarily a secret even before that book was published. If you actually went there and talked to the locals, you’d get a wealth of information, and that newspaper story was merely the start. In short, the residents knew something actually happened, although you can debate forever and a day what that something might have been.
Consider, also, a curious episode that occurred back in 1903 in Van Meter, Iowa, a former coal mining town with just a few hundred residents. Over a period of five days, says the local paper, people saw a large winged creature that may have resembled a bat. It might have even had a resemblance to the infamous West Virginia “Mothman,” although there was no local disaster connected to the creature’s appearance.
The townspeople prepared to send volunteers with weapons and torches, to take care of those pesky beasts, but they were gone, never to return.
According to the reports of the time, there may have been two creatures, and they seemed not only impervious to bullets, but could emit a gas that would cause people to lose their memories. In that, says Chad Lewis, a co-author of a new book “The Van Meter Visitor,” the case may have brought to mind some of the UFO abduction reports.
Well, when Lewis and his colleagues visited Van Meter, a local librarian was able to help them, pointing to the newspaper clippings of the day. Many of the townspeople were familiar with the creature sightings, which were witnessed, according to the newspaper stories, by some of the pillars of the town’s community, such as the mayor and the police chief. The story was even picked up by a number of papers around the country, although it appeared that some of the details were garbled, and some reports clearly didn’t take it very seriously.
Even though investigators have yet to uncover local diaries or other direct documentation aside from those newspaper clippings, it was clear that something strange apparently occurred 110 years ago in that tiny midwestern town.
Now obviously there are no living witnesses to the Van Meter monster, but you’d think there might be to the reported UFO crash at Aztec, NM in March of 1948. Indeed, Scott Ramsey’s recent book, “The Aztec Incident,” presents interviews with very few direct witnesses. Most of the testimony involves second or third-hand sources, and it is really difficult to separate the details from those published in the late Frank Scully’s controversial 1950 book, “Behind the Flying Saucers,” where the case was first disclosed.
The biggest problem is that the episode seems to begin with the Scully book. Critics claim that the author, a gossip columnist for Variety, depended on the testimony of two convinced con men, thus forever tainting the validity of the case.
But it’s also clear that Ramsey, and his co-authors, including his wife, Susanne, long-time investigator Frank Warren, and Dr. Frank Thayer, have faith in their material. The book is self-published, and there is no way sales will ever help cover the half million dollars Ramsey says he has invested in studying the Aztec case.
There remains a lot of skepticism about Aztec, however. Consider a three-part article from Monte Shriver, a former Aztec resident who was alive when the episode allegedly occurred. The detailed rebuttal to Ramsey’s book was posted early in 2013 on Kevin Randle’s blog, “A Different Perspective.” You can find links to all three here:A Different Perspective: Search results for aztec.
Now to some, this article is the nail in the coffin for Aztec. Shriver, an engineer by training, proceeds to dissect many of the salient reports in Ramsey’s book. Roads and bridges are in the wrong place, for example. Worse, he doesn’t personally know anyone who actually heard of the Aztec crash, outside of the Scully book. A student of Aztec High School, when he attended the 60th reunion, none of his classmates knew about a flying saucer crash there either.
Last I checked, Ramsey did not make an effort to refute the article, and that leaves the ball right back in his court. Sure, it’s possible the few witnesses he has located are telling the truth as they know it, and that something strange really occurred in Aztec in 1948 that the townspeople have conveniently forgotten, or somehow failed to notice. For now, however, I put this case in my personal gray basket.
The lingering problem, as our own Chris O’Brien and Kevin Randle state, is that there is no paper trail prior to the Scully book to rely on to demonstrate that something strange actually crash landed near Aztec in Hart Canyon. I realize you can’t prove a negative to a certainty, that it’s not possible to show that a flying saucer didn’t crash near Aztec. Maybe it was all somehow covered up by the military. Maybe the populace somehow remained ignorant of the original incident, or the alleged efforts by the military to retrieve the craft, break it down and transport it somewhere else.
When you look at the three cases, it seems certain that something clearly occurred at Roswell, though you can speculate as to the cause. A weird creature was clearly reported in the vicinity of Van Meter, although you can argue whether it was mass hysteria, or something else that was quite mundane. But with the Aztec UFO crash, you wonder if there is any there there. And that remains the question that’s still unresolved after all these years.
Copyright 1999-2013 Making The Impossible, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy: Your personal information is safe with us. We will positively never give out your name and/or e-mail address to anybody else, and that's a promise!