Blog Archives

Bigfoot Project Investments Offers IPO to Raise Cash to Sell DVDs about Hunting Bigfoot

1/22/2015

Are you looking for a sure-fire investment opportunity backed by the world’s only inexhaustible resource, stupidity? If you have money to throw away—well, you should give it to me—but if you aren’t willing to do that, you now have a new option for disposing of unwanted cash. It turns out that you can soon buy stock in Bigfoot! Or, rather, a company that wants you to pay them to search for Bigfoot. According to the Wall Street Journal, Carmine “Tom” Biscardi is looking to raise $3 million by selling shares in Bigfoot Project Investments, Inc. to help fund more than $100,000 per year in Bigfoot expeditions for raw material for associated media products.

19 Comments

Investigating the Roman Coin Found in Illinois in 1913

1/21/2015

18 Comments

Here’s another of those weird sidelights that form part of the tapestry of fringe history. Today’s example comes from Charles Fort’s Book of the Damned (1919) where the unsystematic compiler of the strange recorded the following paragraph based on a passage from the journal Records of the Past that he had chanced upon:

18 Comments

Blog Claims St. Brendan's Island Revealed by Google Earth

1/20/2015

13 Comments

In the Middle Ages the Navigatio of St. Brendan was a popular legend about the Irish monk’s alleged voyage among many islands in the Atlantic Ocean. Like many such legends, some people took it way more seriously than the original author, who was undoubtedly aware that the story is a collection of myth and fiction. That hasn’t stopped people from looking for one of the islands seen by St. Brendan down to the present, particularly the mist-shrouded island where, in later legend, Brendan and his crew claimed to have spent fifteen days. The latest person to have announced the “discovery” of St. Brendan’s Island is the author of the Journal of the Bizarre blog, who feels that Google Earth has revealed the legendary island.

13 Comments

Scott Wolter Says H2 Network Won't Let Him Give His Real Opinion about Oak Island Mystery

1/19/2015

38 Comments

As you know, Monday is my busiest work day of the week, so I will be keeping today’s blog post short. Since I am also on the hook for page proofs, I have even less time than usual. But I did want to point out that Scott Wolter posted his thoughts about Bigfoot over on his blog, and they are mildly revealing: Wolter doesn’t believe in Bigfoot and didn’t want to do an episode about the creature. The producers reminded him that he is contractually obligated to do what they tell him, and he came around once they explained that he’d receive a free vacation to Nepal on the History Channel/H2’s dime.

38 Comments

The Remarkable Influence of a Wrongly Attributed Quotation about the Pyramids

1/18/2015

9 Comments

On Friday I received the page proofs for my newest book, Foundations of Atlantis, Ancient Astronauts and Other Alternative Pasts, my collection of primary source texts used by fringe historians to support everything from the ancient astronaut theory to hyperdiffusionism. Each entry in the book contains a header with data about the text—its source citation, its original language, etc. Each concludes with the translation’s original publication information and my commentary on the text. To be entirely honest, I’m not sure what I think of the page proofs. I had hoped that the publisher would have used typography to clearly distinguish between the body text and the header and commentary. Instead, it’s all the same typeface and the same size, and they cut out even the skipped space between sections that I had in my manuscript. While the result isn’t exactly unclear, it’s not as visually clear as I would have liked. It’s the fault of eBooks. Because eBooks can’t do complex formatting, publishers are increasingly unwilling to have two separate formats for the print and electronic edition. As a result, the printed book is more or less the eBook on paper, and I think something is lost when the art of information design has to submit imperatives of eBooks.

9 Comments

Review of America Unearthed S03E11 "Tracking Bigfoot"

1/17/2015

62 Comments

The History Channel unexpectedly made tonight’s episode of America Unearthed, S03E11 “Tracking Bigfoot,” available for viewing on its website this morning in advance of its airing on H2 tonight at 9 PM ET. I have therefore taken advantage of the online viewing opportunity to produce an early review of this evening’s episode.

62 Comments

Review of Expedition Unknown S01E02 "Temple of Doom"

1/16/2015

17 Comments

Indiana Jones is the patron saint of cable TV history hosts. His grizzled ghost influences the clothes they wear, their stylish stubble, and the very aesthetics of their programs. Expedition Unknown is no exception, and while host Josh Gates is too goofy to be Indiana Jones, that doesn’t stop the Travel Channel from using Raiders of the Lost Ark as a template. Or, rather, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, since this episode is actually titled “Temple of Doom.”

17 Comments

Novelist Chantel Tattoli Discusses Aliens and Mermaids

1/15/2015

10 Comments

In The Millions this week, journalist Chantel Tattoli has a piece about “Aliens, Mermaids and Other Flights of Fancy.” I wanted to like the article since it is a somewhat skeptical appraisal of fringe ideas on cable TV and the internet, but like so many journalistic appraisals, it settles for platitudes and generalities where a sharper focus might have built the article into something better. Even given the constraints of being a “quick hit,” it assumes agreement from the reader about the nature and value of monsters and aliens.

10 Comments

The Case of the Time Traveling Ohio Airplane

1/14/2015

11 Comments

I was doing some reading today, and I came across the following report from the June 1963 edition of The Saucer News which somehow or another found its way into the Project Bluebook files. At the time Saucer News was edited by the late James W. Moseley, the famous ufologist, who in the 1960s was one of the field’s best known names and was then a close friend of James Randi, whom he later declared an enemy when Randi became a more dedicated skeptic. The story in question comes from a piece on anomalous aerial phenomena written by Sandy Moseley, his onetime wife. Here is what she reported:

11 Comments

Scott Wolter, Robert Bauval, and the Orion Correlation

1/13/2015

35 Comments

Scott Wolter was on Darkness Radio this week, and the three hour broadcast is now up for listening. It was mostly Wolter’s usual shtick, but there were a few interesting tidbits. In addition, if you’re interested in Wolter’s non-fringe activities, he talks about his work on the Pentagon after 9/11 as well as his work on concrete in criminal investigations.

35 Comments