Southern Ohio may seem a world-away from the Pacific Northwest habitat one typically pictures when they hear the word Bigfoot, but the region does have a rich history of hairy biped reports. The rugged Appalachian foothills of southeastern Ohio, in particular, have a number of reports from the Shawnee State Forest in Scioto and Adams Counties, and the Wayne National Forest further east. In his book “Field Guide to Bigfoot and Other Mystery Primates” Loren Coleman recounts the story of a devil monkey seen in the Duncansville area of Adams County. (Duncansville, which is mostly Amish owned hilltop pasture land and forest, is a short drive from the famous Serpent Mound and was a destination for curiosity seekers in the mid to late 1980s because of an image of an angel or Christ supposedly burned into a church door when a young girl was cured of an illness after stepping outside during a service for some fresh air and having the entity appear to her.) The famous Ohio Howl was also recorded in eastern Appalachian Ohio, in Columbiana County where Ohio borders Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Read more »

by SMiles Lewis

Some time back I saw this allegedly official patch for stealth bomber pilots and crew. The 509th Bomber Wing were the first atomic bomb flyers and were based out of Roswell, New Mexico. I never thought it was likely to be real.

Then last year friend and fellow researcher Greg Bishop wrote about his encounter with the patch while working on a new British documentary called Mirage Men. Apparently, UFO researcher Curtis Peebles had acquired one of the patches. And another UFO researcher, Dennis Balthaser actually called the Air Force and interrogated someone over the phone trying to ascertain the validity and meaning behind the patch.

Now, it appears that an artist and activist named Trevor Paglen is having a bit of fun doing what he likes to do most, “deliberately blurring the lines between social science, contemporary art, and a host of even more obscure disciplines in order to construct unfamiliar, yet meticulously researched ways to interpret the world around us.” You see, Trevor just posted an article with slideshow and accompanying audio to the Newsweek website detailing this and many other exotic patches: Badges of Secrecy.

So while I doubt the validity of his analysis of these likely hoaxed patches and badges, I still have to stop and ponder their reality, and consider it alongside Trevor’s work in exposing “secret military bases, the California prison system, and the CIA’s practice of ‘extraordinary rendition.’ ”

By the way, you can get replicas of this and other patches through this LINK.