Finding the weird and wonderful in Bermuda Cross one item off my bucket list for 2022: I visited Bermuda on a family holiday. Unsurprisingly, when I visit new places, I […]
Author: Sharon
Weird news and mystery booms for the end of 2022
Here we are in a new year! Let’s hope it’s a good one. Coming soon is a new post about what I did on vacation. I was looking for interesting […]
Texarkana Fish Rain Mystery Solved
The fish that fell in a December thunderstorm likely came from the nervous stomachs of birds that ejected their recent meal, investigators conclude.
The coelacanth as a red herring
This post is updated from its original publication in 2009.– SH In researching three areas of what I concluded were mostly “scientifical” fields of inquiry for my book – cryptozoology, […]
Freak Out Over Hairless Mysterious Animals
Weird hairless animals attract morbid attention. Is it a mutant? A monster? Well, it’s most likely an unfortunate local animal who fortunately left remains for us to photograph, gawk over, […]
Going “Off the Edge” is more popular than ever – Book Review
I’ve written twice on Flat Eartherism. On Spooky Geology – Anti-globular convictions: Flat Earth belief explodes in popularity On this blog with thoughts on the 2018 Behind the Curve documentary […]
TikTok generates multiple scare lore stories about flagged cars
Always keen to hear about the latest “weird news”, I noticed a trend in 2020 where young women (typically) were reporting that their cars were moderately vandalized in busy parking […]
Examining the Mentor ghost child video
A news article out of Mentor, Ohio attracted my attention this past week. The article claimed that local residents were observing strange, “mysterious” incidents and reporting them on their neighborhood […]
The odd and clunky guide to researching the paranormal – Book Review
Researching the Paranormal: How to Find Reliable Information about Parapsychology, Ghosts, Astrology, Cryptozoology, Near-Death Experiences, and More By Courtney M. Block, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2020. 342pp. There has not […]
Fake tiger tales and other plush hoaxes
Police in the Steyning area of West Sussex, England, were called to a public park on the evening of July 23, 2020 to respond to a report of a big […]
Ghost Studies and Lightforms: A review of two paranormal research books
Long ago, my interest in paranormal topics became jaded because popular books were repetitive, full of the same information and stories as the last one. For decades, books written on […]
Paranormal tourism paper shows themed tourism is popular and profitable
I collaborated on a new paper now online for Cornell Hospitality Quarterly about paranormal tourism called “Paranormal Tourism: Market Study of a Novel and Interactive Approach to Space Activation and […]
Copy-paste cryptozoology
A review of Chasing American Monsters: Over 250 Creatures, Cryptids, and Hairy Beasts by Jason Offutt (2019). I’ve been thinking a lot about cryptozoology lately. While consuming content about many […]
Dead bulls generate media BS
News outlets have picked up and run with the story of five bulls (Hereford bovines) that have died under mysterious circumstances near Salem, Oregon last July. I’m not sure why […]
The Mysterious Monster Mash of the Mid 1970s: Bigfoot hits prime time TV
Bigfoots and their other monstrous cohorts were presented to U.S. audience in a serious television documentary for the first time in 1974. The outing was so successful that it still […]
My three favorite vintage books on monsters and the paranormal
Every once in a while, I remember one of the books from my childhood that I recall with great fondness. Thanks to the Internet, I can usually find a blurb […]
Flat-earthers as scientifical Americans: One message from ‘Behind the Curve’
Most people react to flat-earthers by labeling them as stupid or scientifically illiterate. A moderate effort to examine what they say will reveal that is not so. On the contrary, […]
The monsters of cryptozoology: Book review
A review of The Monster Book: Creatures, Beasts and Fiends of Nature by Nick Redfern. Cryptozoology literature has a problem.
Supernatural Creep: When explanations slide off to the fringes
Originally published as Supernatural Creep: The Slippery Slope to Unfalsifiability for my column Sounds Sciencey on csicop.org May 29, 2013. I’m taking a step beyond sciencey with the following topic. What happens when science doesn’t cooperate with your subject area? […]
Paranormal education classes showing up at major universities
Paranormal subjects typically lie outside the circle of academic respectability. One can argue that they have been deliberately marginalized to keep them diminished in credibility. But, with the majority of […]