Tag Archives: mothman

252 – Terror In The Skies: Hunting Thunderbirds & Truth With Seth Breedlove

My skeptical take on the Chicagoland Mothman flap has confounded some, but thankfully Seth Breedlove from Small Town Monsters decided to include an interview with me in his new film anyway. Entitled Terror in the Skies, the documentary explores historic and contemporary reports of winged weirdies over Illinois. At the time of this writing, Terror in the Skies has recently become the # 1 documentary film new release on Amazon Prime.

So why did Seth include me in his newest movie? I definitely should have asked him that question! We’ll maybe because he understands that I’m not actually a noisy negativist, as we joke about in this interview. Maybe he understands that I really care about the advancement of the paranormal field and that’s why my expectations are high.

I do expect investigators to check witness statements against basic facts. Far from excluding the incredible, vetting witness reserves an important a place for the truth, above and beyond the everyday muck. If every claim is treated the same and given the same importance, you’ve uncovered nothing but mud. It becomes nearly impossible to tell what is real and what is a hoax.

If something truly incredible has occurred, you better believe those who protect the status quo will try to hide it in plain sight. Just how do they do that? Disinformation.

Authentic phenomena may have occurred during this Chicagoland Mothman flap, but how will we ever know? How will we ever find the proverbial needle in the haystack, if the haystack itself is entirely constructed of momentarily convincing replicas, but ultimately fake needles?

Seeking an authentic needle in a haystack of convincing look-alikes? Good luck! It’s a mess!

That’s how disinformation works. It’s simple. It’s easy. It’s cheap. It’s effective. And it may be what has occurred here.

Perhaps most telling is that not one supposed witness to the Chicagoland Mothman came forward to be interviewed for Terror in the Skies. Elsewhere in the film witnesses share testimony about Thunderbird sightings. Even so many years later, several witnesses still participated in Small Town Monsters’ Mothman of Point Pleasant, appearing on-camera to contributing their eye-witnesses statements. It bears remembering that over 100 witnesses bravely attested publicly to their encounters during the original 1966-67 flap.

So what could that one true anomaly in this mess of the Lake Michigan Mothman saga have been? What might at least one of the reported witnesses actually have seen?

Nearly 20 years ago I interviewed Wisconsin witnesses reporting encounters with strange creatures with impossibly large wingspans. Is history repeating itself? Might these manifestations follow a cyclical pattern? Is there a migratory route that spans Illinois, Wisconsin, and other states.

This certainly comes up in our conversation with Seth in several instances. For example, we discuss the 1977 Marlon Lowe Lawndale, IL case as well as a very similar newspaper report from 1909 in St. Charles, IL. In both cases, birds of unusual size attempt to carry away unsuspecting children playing just outside their homes.

The Post-Crescent (Appleton, Wisconsin), May 3, 1909

Another example hits even closer to home. Kevin Walkowski, my very own cousin and Mike’s godfather had his own sighting in 1988. I interviewed him and contributed his story to several books including Weird Wisconsin. Kevin’s description which compared the wingspan of this massive bird to a Piper Cub plane still resonates in my memory and was echoed in a witness statement from the Illinois Big Bird flap of 1948 featured in Terror in the Skies.

Belvidere Daily Republican, April 26, 1948
Kevin Walkowski describes the size of a possible Thunderbird he spotted in the skies over Brookfield, WI in 1988. We recorded his recollections on video in 2015. I plan to make the full video available on at http://www.youtube.com/mothman. Subscribe to get a notification.

In fact, tales of such anomalies extend into the prehistory of the Midwest and can still be seen in petroglyphs and vibrant tribal traditions. Something strange flies in Midwestern skies. Keep your eyes on the skies and those patterns that repeat throughout history and we may just uncover something authentic yet extraordinary.

Watch me and Troy Taylor in Terror in the Skies. Listen to this episode. Then visit me, Mike, and Wendy Lynn at Troy Taylor’s Haunted America Conference this weekend. As usual, Mike and Wendy will be bringing the paranormal rock, and this year I’ll be speaking about Midwestern cases of poltergeists and demonic possession.

The song this week is inspired by Seth’s movie and the fantastic legends of the “Thunderbird”!

From the four winds
I’m flying
in your visions
i’m fighting
From the mountain you’ll hear my voice in the storm
voice of the storm

The battle’s harbinger
The spirit’s messenger
The cloudburst in my eye
To Honor the fallen and punish evil men
I am here to break the sky’

You can crush my bones
and you can pound my head
take me so far from home
and just leave me for dead
But when I spread my wings
with the lightning burn
I am the flood and fire
The Thunderbird

The serpent rises
I’ll attack
Terror in the skies
I’ll be back
On the horizon you might see my wings in the storm
wings of the storm

The battle’s harbinger
The spirit’s messenger
The cloudburst in my eye
To Honor the fallen and punish evil men
I am here to break the sky’

You can crush my bones
and you can pound my head
take me so far from home
and just leave me for dead
But when I spread my wings
with the lightning burn
I am the flood and fire
The Thunderbird

This Week’s Best Paranormal News – April 12th, 2019

Hey guys,
If you missed our last podcast it’s a great discussion with paranormal reality star Brian Cano (from Haunted Collector and Paranormal Caught on Camera). Click here to listen to it.

In the meantime, we’re back with the best paranormal news we saw this week!

‘Haunted’ doll ‘blinks’ in selfie at abandoned ‘Village of the Damned’
mirror

This one went viral on social media this week and it’s a pretty great pic. The creepy doll appeared to close her eyes in an abandoned building known as ‘The Village of the Damned’

Chinese scientists made super-monkeys with human brain genes
Futurism

And so it begins… “It is a classic slippery slope issue and one that we can expect to recur as this type of research is pursued.”

We Spoke to an MIT Computer Scientists About the Simulation Hypothesis
Digital Trends

The simulation hypothesis, which was famously probed in the 1999 film The Matrix, is the subject of a new book by Rizwan Virk, a computer scientist and video game developer who leads Play Labs at MIT. In his book, Virk endeavors to unpack the heady arguments that call our physical world into question.

Iran Says ‘Tall, White’ Space Aliens Control America
Forbes

Documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden conclusively prove that the United States has been ruled by a race of tall, white space aliens who also assisted the rise of Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Okay…

Incident Detail Report Shows Man Called 911 to Report Sighting of ‘7-8 ft Tall’ Creature in Woodstock, Illinois
The Singular Fortean Society

Now here’s a great example of how you do a paranormal investigation lead by our friends in The Singular Fortean Society. Someone called 911 to report seeing a strange winged creature in the northern Chicago burbs. The investigators followed up with the caller as well as did a Freedom of Information Act request to get a transcript of the call. Now, the rest of it is sketchy because the caller was hoping to “name the creature” and then they weren’t responsive to the investigator’s follow-ups. But The Singular Fortean handled this exactly right.

Stevie Wonder isn’t blind, claim wild theorists – and here’s the ‘evidence’
mirror

The so-called ‘Stevie Wonder Truthers’ bizarrely claim there’s a whole heap of evidence to suggest Stevie can see. Ummm… what?!

Sneaker Pimps – Superstition (Stevie Wonder Cover) YouTube

Trip Hop pioneers Sneaker Pimps covering Stevie?! Oh yeah. If Stevie can really see, we hope he watches the video!

Next week, we’re tackling the cursed movie Antrum. Please make sure you’re subscribed to the podcast to get it as soon as it comes out!

See you on the other side of the weekend!
Mike, Wendy, and the SYOTOS family

C Is For Curses: Ten Famous Pop Culture Maledictions

On See You On The Other Side, we deal with all kinds of paranormal and unusual phenomena. While we love ghosts, UFOs, and cryptids, which are really the big three of the paranormal, we really just can’t resist a good curse. (and who can? That’s the scary part, right?) Here are some of our favorite curses we’ve covered on the podcast, with a link to each episode.

1. The Kennedy Curse

The Kennedys are America’s royalty. They are a fabulously wealthy and beautiful clan whose children have spent generations in powerful elected positions from the East Coast. With a President, multiple Senators and House Representatives, you would think that these guys have the world wrapped around their little finger. But tragedy has followed their family for generations, from the assassinations of the two most powerful brothers to the airplane crash of JFK Jr. to the failed lobotomy of Rosemary Kennedy, somehow their incredible fotune seems tainted.

2. The Oscar Love Curse

Oh, Hollywood. Glamor, money, fame… and very little lasting love relationships. Big stars change spouses fast You’d think that if you win an Academy Award, the film industry’s biggest honor, that your loved one would want to stick by you more than ever, but it ain’t so. Best Actress winners particularly seem to have problems with their love life after winning the big award. Is the great esteem cursed somehow or might it be the jealousy of the entertainment industry causing the split (especially when the woman outshines the man)?

3. The Franklin Expedition Curse

In 1845, the British Navy launched their most ambitious mission to find the Northwest Passage to establish a trade route between the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. They sent their most technically advanced ships and two captains who were well-versed in Arctic exploration. Both ships became trapped in the ice and disappeared, prompting multiple searches for the Lost Franklin Expedition from Britain, America, and Canada over the years. Both ships were found in the late 2010s, but when the HMS Terror was discovered in 2016, the local Nunavut people felt that the spirits were disturbed on their island by bothering the sunken ship. Several untimely deaths occured in the community and they sent a team of guardians to perform a ritual to keep their community safe from the curse.

4. The Poltergeist Curse

No doubt about it, Poltergeist is a terrifying film. But the movie is fiction, what seemingly happened to the actors involved isn’t. Both of the actresses who played the daughters of the haunted family, Dominique Dunne and Heather O’Rourke died way too young. Dunne was murdered by her ex-boyfriend and O’Rourke died of a freak bowel obstruction. Julian Beck and Will Sampson, the evil and good spirits from Poltergeist II: The Other Side, died shortly after the movie’s release, hadrly unexpectedly, but unlucky at least. Some people say it was because they used real human skeletons on the set of the film, but Craig T. Nelson is still doing just fine…

5. The 27 Club

Jimi Hendrix. Janis Joplin. Jim Morrison. Kurt Cobain. Amy Winehouse. All immensely famous musicians who died at the peak of their fame and way before their time. But why did it all end for them before their 28th birthday?

6. Robert Johnson and the Curse of the Crossroads

Robert Johnson was one of the most influential blues guitarists of all time and was called the King of the Delta Blues. He also died at 27, but was never as famous in his lifetime as the other members of the club. His fame came after he died and has been called the best bluesman ever by the likes of Keith Richards and Eric Clapton. His songs have been covered by everyone from Led Zeppelin to The Blues Brothers. Some of them can be dark with titles like “Hellhound on My Trail” and his most famous song, “Crossroads” people say is about how he sold his soul to the Devil at a road crossing in Rosedale, Mississippi. It gave him amazing musical talent, but it ended up taking his life early.

The Mothman Death Curse

If you haven’t heard of the Mothman of Point Pleasant, a dark winged humanoid with red glowing eyes who was seen in the late 60s in West Virginia, you might consider yourself lucky. No less than the man behind the International Cryptozoology Museum himself, the legendary Loren Coleman, wrote Mothman: Evil Incarnate, a book where he describes the Mothman Death Curse. He devotes an appendix to one hundred mysterious and untimely deaths of people who have been involved in the Mothman mythos in some way, from the original victims of the Silver Bridge Collapse to people who worked on the Richard Gere film.

The Curse of King Tut

There were supposedly nine victims of King Tut’s curse, people who were related to the excavation of the Egyptian Pharaoh’s tomb. Sir Arthutr Conan Doyle, the writer behind Sherlock Holmes, even toured that there was some kind of supernatural vengeance that was being wreaked on these Western interlopers. It was featured in all the newspapers at the time, but also Egypt was a very popular topic to write about, and the financier of the King Tut Expedition gave a single paper the exclusive rights to the story. So, was the curse blown out of proportion in the interest of paper sales or was there really a curse on the wall of the tomb of Egypt’s Boy King?

William Henry Harrison and the Tippecanoe Curse

Before he became President, William Henry Harrison was governor of the Indiana Territory and was behind a shady deal that screwed the American Indians there out of a good deal of their land. A great battle was fought at Tippecanoe and Harrison’s forces emerged triumphant. The brother of defeated Shawnee Chief Tecumseh, Tenskwatawa, was considered a great prophet and he supposedly cursed Harrison to die in office and the presidents that every twenty years after. And they did, Harrison was elected in 1840 and dies in 1841, Lincoln dies in 1865, Garfield in 1881, McKinley in 1901, Harding in 1923, Roosevelt in 1944, and Kennedy in 1963. Seems like being elected in a year that ends in a zero is bad luck until Reagan survives his assassination attempt in 1981.

The Curse of the Billy Goat

How ’bout them Cubbies, right? They’re the most famous Chicago sports institution and are beloved by celebrities from Bill Murray to Vince Vaughn. And years afer his death, most baseball fans can still hear Harry Carey’s famous call of “Holy Cow!” perfectly in their heads. But another Chicago institution is the Billy Goat Tavern (the inspiration behind the Saturday Night Live classic “Cheeseburger Cheeseburger” sketch) and then the owner was kicked out of a Cubs game in 1945 because his pet goat smelled too bad, the rumor is that he cursed the team to never win the National League Pennant again. They didn’t get in the World Series again for 71 years and coincidentally clinched the title on the 46th anniversary of the owner’s death.

177 – Mothman Delusion: A New Year’s Resolution for Paranormal Research

The biggest paranormal story in the Midwest in 2017 was the winged humanoid sightings over Chicago and we have covered the Chicago Mothman extensively over the past several months. First in episode 159, we interviewed the editor of Phantoms and Monsters blog where many of the Mothman sightings have been reported, then we brought on the great cryptozoologist Loren Coleman who just released a new book Mothman: Evil Incarnate.

What’s the Mothman? A dark winged humanoid with glowing red eyes, made most famous by a series of sightings in Point Pleasant, West Virginia in the late 1960s. The sightings were followed by UFOs, Men in Black, and a tragic bridge collapse 13 months after the initial sighting.

The Mothman statue in Point Pleasant, West Virginia

Fast forward to 2017 and the Mothman has been reported seen over the Chicagoland area dozens of times mostly to a blog called Phantoms and Monsters. My sister Allison has been looking at the stories and then doing investigations of the sites of each reported sighting over at her YouTube channel, http://www.youtube.com/mothman.

As she was digging she found inconsistencies in more and more of the accounts even going so far as having a private investigator look into a possible police report that was a featured account over the Summer. (She didn’t find it and either did the Chicago Tribune.) Plus, 3 out of the 4 Mothman reports that came into Illinois MUFON came from the same IP address (meaning same Wi-Fi network, meaning the same house.) She began to get skeptical whether or not there really are winged humanoids flying over Chicago.

For her efforts, she’s been interviewed on Midnight In The Desert  and featured on the Mysterious Universe blog, but needless to say it hasn’t made her popular with the Chicago Mothman investigators. So for this first episode of 2018, we wanted to give the Chicago Mothman one more discussion because it was such a big story around these parts. Sure, we’ll come back when there’s a “break” in the case, but the important part is that in this episode we talk about our renewed resolve to use the scientific method in our paranormal research (and Patrick Swayze, but you’ll have to listen to figure how he fits in!)

Joining us for this discussion are two Chicago Forteans, Madeline Kate from Measuring The Circle podcast and Sam Maranto, the state director of Illinois MUFON (who received some of the original reports!) Allison Jornlin of course is involved, as is Tobias Wayland of the Singular Fortean Society, who has been collecting the Mothman stories as part of the original Chicago Mothman Taskforce – he even shares a Mothman story from Rockford that he interviewed the witness personally!

It’s a good frank discussion about the Chicago Mothman – doubts, inconsistencies, disinformation campaigns, hoaxes, and all, as well as how we can try to all get along better as Fortean researchers.

UPDATE: Here’s an extra interview with a Mothman researcher (and Chicago native!)

And for this week’s song, we used some inspiration from good old Carl Sagan, the man who coined the phrase “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. His book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark is a treatise on the scientific method and critical thinking. Yeah, it’s a buzzkill but if we’re ever going to convince the skeptics we gotta take getting the facts seriously. Here’s Sunspot with “House of Cards”.

It’s a demon-haunted world
and you don’t get to dig a grave in my backyard.
you know we have to be the candle in the dark
You can’t build a dynasty on a house of cards.You might think that you’re a monster but you’re just a quack
talking a lot of smack setting the whole field back
a lotta tall tales comin piling up to nothin
looking for the clicks and acting like like a d$%@.

it’s a curiosity, all this privacy
anonymity, who can you believe?
You can tell me all day ‘bout the trash you heard
doesn’t matter how absurd unless stand by your word

All this animosity comes down to money
You’re misrepping all the data just to fit your theory
You wanna sell books or you want some truth?
It sure looks to me you ain’t much of a sleuth

It’s a demon-haunted world
and you don’t get to dig a grave in my backyard.
you know we have to be the candle in the dark
You can’t build a dynasty on a house of cards.

Extraordinary claims, extraordinary proof
winged dudes on the roof kinda sounds like a goof
we need a real witness not all anonymous
how bout some testimony don’t sound like baloney.

Detail needs to be there, you know they’re gonna nitpick,
eaten by the cynics, defeated by the skeptics
t’s need to be crossed, you can’t just gloss,
over all the small stuff or things are gonna get rough.

Gotta share the data, info wants to be free,
transparency, no secrecy,
It takes all kinds of different minds
if we want it to be better, we gotta work together.

It’s a demon-haunted world
and you don’t get to dig a grave in my backyard.
you know we have to be the candle in the dark
You can’t build a dynasty on a house of cards.

174 – Mothman: Evil Incarnate with Loren Coleman

This week we have two 50th anniversary tragedies that we talk about on the podcast, one musical and one paranormal. The first is that in Madison we’re acknowledging the half-centennial of the death of Otis Redding, whose plane crashed into Lake Monona on December 10th, 1967. He was only 26 years old, just a year off the cursed 27 Club.

The second tragic anniversary has many more overtones of high strangeness. The Silver Bridge collapsed in Point Pleasant, West Virginia on December 15th, 2017 thirteen months to the day after the first reported sighting of the Mothman.

mothman evil incarnate loren coleman
The Mothman as drawn by an eyewitness in 1966.

The Mothman was a winged humanoid with red eyes that people were seeing in the area as well as getting an overwhelming sense of dread.  Once the mothman sightings started happening, other paranormal events began rearing their head. Reports of Men in Black, UFOs, prophetic dreams, and a strange grinning man by the name of Indrid Cold started circulating and everything culminated in the tragic Silver Bridge collapse that killed 46 people on December 15th, 1967.

Researcher John Keel famously collected all these stories and really created the modern narrative of the Mothman with his book, The Mothman Prophecies, in 1975.  It famously becomes a big Hollywood movie in 2002. When Keel became unable to do press for the film, he called upon his old friend  Loren Coleman to handle the interviews.

loren coleman mothman evil incarnate
Allison Jornlin with Loren Coleman (second from left) at the 2016 Milwaukee Paranormal Conference

Now to say that Loren is a noted cryptozoologist is an understatement, he’s one of the most respected researchers in the field and I’ve been reading his books for decades. He wrote Mothman and Other Curious Encounters in 2002 and even John Keel called it “the most complete overview of the phenomenon.”

Fast forward to 2017 and the Mothman is back in the headlines. This time with alleged sightings all over the Chicagoland area. Allison from Milwaukee Ghosts has been going to the location of the sightings that have been reported and creating videos of the area to help people visualize them. It’s an eye opening look into the painstaking investigative process. Check out her YouTube channel to see her dozens of on-location videos at http://www.youtube.com/mothman.

Luren took Viagra, but it was expensive then and now you can buy this medicine cheaper or get a free sample.

The anniversary of the Silver Bridge collapse, December 15th, is also  Loren Coleman’s latest book comes out , Mothman: Evil Incarnate. The Mothman hasn’t been content to be in the shadows. Loren talks about the Mothman Death Curse and the misfortune that seems to surround people who find themselves investigating this strange phenomenon decades after the original incident, book, and movie.

This episode is not only a great primer in the history of the Mothman case, but it’s also an insightful look into how Loren Coleman became one of the world’s greatest cryptozoologists as Allison and I get to discuss his investigative process with him.

To get a signed copy of Mothman: Evil Incarnate, click here to buy a signed copy from Loren’s awesome International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

In the episode, we also talk about Wendy’s visit to the Mothman museum in Point Pleasant, West Virginia and her pilgrimage to the new Silver Bridge. Wendy watched The Mothman Prophecies and listened to the original book this summer on a roadtrip and you can check out her reactions above as part of Scott Markus‘ fun video series “A Ghost Hunter Watches”.

One of the things that was surprising about the Mothman story is how UFOs and weirdness seems to occur in Point Pleasant as well, it’s like they didn’t just get one X-File, they got the whole cabinet. Indrid Cold was a mysterious character who showed up during the events and asked people about the lights they saw in the sky. He made mysterious phone calls to Keel, talked to the local reporter, and even was said by one report to speak to someone telepathically.  He was so smily and strange, they called him The Grinning Man.

We don’t feel there’s been enough attention given to Mr. Cold so for this week’s track, we decided to write him his own song. This is Sunspot with “The Grinning Man”.

A form made of chaos
it can smell the blood on you
this planet haunted by us
and the owners want their due

a thin veneer
hiding a zone of fear

it knows your wobbliest spots
sees inside your darkest of hearts
knows every little trick that helps you lose your soul

a banshee screams
burned right into your dreams

When the black wings flutter and red eyes look about
you’ll see the grinning man when the lights go out
then the telephone rings, there’s no one at the end
you’ll see the grinning man when the lights go dead

it knows your wobbliest spots
sees inside your darkest of hearts
this planet haunted by us
the owners want their due

a thin veneer
hiding a zone of fear

When the black wings flutter and red eyes look about
you’ll see the grinning man when the lights go out
then the telephone rings, there’s no one at the end
you’ll see the grinning man when the lights go dead

159 – Sweet Home Chicago Mothman: Round Table with Lon Strickler, Manuel Navarette, and Tobias Wayland

The Midwest is abuzz this Summer with stories of winged humanoid creatures flying over Chicagoland. Tall dark creatures with red glowing eyes have been spotted all over the city with dozens of sightings this year alone.

Here’s Lon Strickler from Phantoms and Monsters‘ awesome Google Map of the Chicago Mothman sightings.

Now Lon has been collecting these stories, Manuel Navarette from UFO Clearinghouse has been writing up the reports and investigating each site, our friend Tobias Wayland from the Singular Fortean has been following the sightings closely and looking for ties to other cryptid and paranormal cases, and of course, our own Allison Jornlin from Milwaukee Ghosts has been visiting all of the sites and walking through them for her Haunted Road Trip YouTube channel.

The Chicago Mothman is the big paranormal story of the summer and we knew it was time to get a round table together of these researchers to dive into the best sightings, the methodology of investigation, and the similarities and differences from the 1966 and 1967 Point Pleasant, West Virginia Mothman sightings that was a harbinger of disaster for the town.

And unlike this summer’s King Arthur movie, our Round Table does NOT disappoint (zing!) Not only does Lon give us the skinny on Remote Viewing Experiments he’s been conducting, but Manuel tells us why he thinks that there is a cover-up from the local government and media.

Wendy and I also shout out to all the new friends we made at the Michigan Paracon over the weekend in Sault Ste. Marie, we headed north to the Upper Peninsula to party with some awesome Michiganders and meet up with former podcast guests like Week In Weird‘s Greg and Dana Newkirk, Haunt Investigators of Michigan, Ghost Adventures’ Jeff Belanger, and Ghost Hunting 2.0‘s Chris Bores.

Wendy, Allison, and I also sported some sweet new See You On The Other Side t-shirts with a special new design made by Brent Simpson, and here you can see Allison modeling the shirt with some of our friends from the Paracon!

And you can check out one of those shirts for yourself on Amazon right here!

Now for an episode like this, you know we just couldn’t resist working on a song by the man who sold his soul at the Crossroads himself, Robert Johnson (who we covered in detail in our first episode, “Making A Deal With The Devil: The Musicians Who Sold Their Souls To Satan”. ) Everyone from B.B. King to The Blues Brothers have done their versions of this song, and we thought we’d leave our mark on it. It’s also the last song that Stevie Ray Vaughan every played, at Alpine Valley Music Theatre in Wisconsin in 1990. It was an epic jam with Stevie, Eric Clapton,  Buddy Guy, Jimmie Vaughan, and Robert Cray – August 25th, 1990. So we also thought it was appropriate because this wewas the 27th anniversary of his death. And here’s our little blues jam, Sunspot with “Sweet Home Chicago Mothman”.

Oh, baby don’t you want to go?
Oh, baby don’t you want to go?
Back to the land of winged humanoids
To my sweet home Chicago

On Roosevelt and 59th
perched right on the light,
Flying off to the air
after flapping its wings twice,

Oh whoa,
honey don’t you want to go
where the mothman flies
Sweet Home Chicago

At Humboldt it’s an owl,
they call it Lechuza,
eyes of glowing red,
and they’re staring right through ya

Oh Baby,
Honey don’t you wanna go
to the land of the were-owl
Sweet Home Chicago.

Went to Lollapalooza
wanted to see the bands
But he had to fly away
everyone yelled at the mothman

saying Baby
Honey don’t you wanna go
to the land of man sized bats,
Sweet Home Chicago

The Tribune is silent
but City Hall knows it’s true
the Police won’t do nothing to
Make Godfather look a fool

And they say Baby
Honey don’t you wanna go
to where nobody’s seen nothing
My Sweet Home Chicago

Oh, baby don’t you want to go?
Oh, baby don’t you want to go?
Back to the land of winged humanoids
To my sweet home Chicago

157 – Monsters Among Us: Cryptids and More with Linda Godfrey

It’s no secret that we’re big fans of Linda Godfrey, the author who first brought the world’s attention to the Beast of Bray Road in the early 1990s.  We interviewed her all the way back in Episode 51, brought her to our cryptid round table in Episode 67, and couldn’t wait to get her back to discuss her latest book, Monsters Among Us. I mean, of course we’re going to love Linda!

linda godfrey
Linda Godfrey

  1. She’s from right down the road from where we all grew up.
  2. She co-authored the book Weird Wisconsin which is sadly out-of-print but it was the Fortean Bible of America’s Dairyland in the 90s.
  3. She is a great storyteller who keeps things believable. I don’t have to mention that there’s a trend in this field to just jump and exaggerate outrageous details to juice up a paranormal story. Linda das managed to keep a good deal of her journalistic integrity for over a quarter of a century, now that’s something to be proud of!

To kick off the show, Wendy and I use our trashed voices to talk a little about our musical weekend, including a show at a haunted club in Middleton, Wisconsin, the Wisconsin State Fair, and an afternoon show on the Sugar River (which has its own UFO sightings and ghost stories) and then Wendy also tells a couple highlights from her trip to the Star Trek Convention in Las Vegas at the beginning of August. Including her two favorite cosplayers as Captain Kirk and Mister Spock!

Then, Allison from Milwaukee Ghosts joins Linda and I for a discussion about the latest news about the Beast of Bray Road, her favorite new cryptid stories,  a little Native American lore from Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and even a cryptic preview of what she’s working on right now!

YOu’re going to want to get more info on Linda by checking out her blog and get the latest on the Chicago Mothman, dogmen, werewolves, skin walkers, bipedal canines, and more at her Twitter feed (@lindasgodfrey).

Considering that our first interview with Linda about her book, American Monsters, inspired our EP of the same name, we knew that another conversation with her would spark some musical creativity.  Her titles just lend very well to tracks laden with symbolism. When we thought about “Monsters Among Us”, we thought about our neighbors. Your neighbors seem like they’re great people and you have fun with them, you have them over for a barbecue, and you really like them.  But then you see what they write about on Facebook. You see what kind of beliefs they have and in today’s Internet and political climate, it seemed that writing a song about how people that usually like each other as neighbors who connect through their locations or families or sports teams, might hate each other if they knew all about each other’s political beliefs.

Are other people’s differing beliefs in this world of outrage, forces for and against political correctness, and fake clickbait so offensive that we discount how they are when you’re hanging out with them in person. So we thought that lent itself to an interesting song idea, “The Psychopath Next Door”.

Watching through the windows
Peeking through the cracks
Waiting for their moment
So don’t you turn your back.

They act like they’re your friends,
But don’t you be a cuck,
They’re worshipping the Devil,
And it’s your soul they’ll suck

Sometimes the truth
Is just a metaphor
To think I barbecued with
The psychopath next door

The monsters live among us,
I see plenty everyday.
I don’t know who I can trust.
So I’ll send you all away.

So I don’t want no bumperstickers,
And I don’t want no big red hats.
I’m so sick of disagreeing,
So I’ll just hang out with my cats.

Sometimes the truth
Is just a metaphor
To think I barbecued with
The psychopath next door

Sometimes the truth
Is just a metaphor
To think I barbecued with
The psychopath next door