EVERYDAY STRANGE - The Devil's Footprints

“Since the recent snow storms, some animal has left marks on the snow that have driven a great many inhabitants from their propriety, and caused an uproar of commotion among the inhabitants in general.”

- The Western Luminary & Family Newspaper for Devon, Cornwall, Somerset & Dorset. 13 February 1855

DEVON, UK - It was 160 years ago on this day, February 8, 1855 that one of the most enduring mysteries of the world took place. The people of Devon county, England awoke to find a mysterious track of seemingly bipedal footprints in the snow. The prints were spaced roughly eight to 16 inches apart and described as four inches in length and two and half to three inches wide. The tracks were uniformly single file. They were made by cloven hooves which led over top of buildings, through walls, haystacks, gates and enclosures stretching over a course of 100 miles from Exmouth to Topsham. Some apparently lucky villagers reported the tracks leading up to their front doors before retreating back again. They even continued across the two mile expanse of the River Exe estuary.

Kangaroos, badgers, otters, experimental balloons and freezing rain have all been offered as alternate explanations for the prints, but did this event even happen? Very little contemporary reports remain to this day, only a few survive, that there are contemporary accounts at all is encouraging.

River Exe estuary.

First mention of the mysterious case appeared in the February 13, 1855 edition of the Western Luminary in which local people were already ascribing the mysterious hoofmarks to the devil. But they did not cower in fear at the idea. Within hours of the discovery of the bizarre trail, searches were conducted to discover their cause, tracing the prints for miles. No one however, tracked the full 100 mile length of the marking. Had anybody even attempted to do so there wouldn’t have been enough time as the snow was not deep and fluctuating temperatures played havoc with the impressions. Initially, it was reported that the tracks covered an area of around 40 miles, which was deduced from various reports coming from several different towns in the county. After a few weeks interest in the story eventually died down and the Devil’s Footprints became something of a local legend and nothing more.

Interest in the story was revived by the ubiquitous Charles Fort in his 1919 work ‘The Book of the Damned’. By 1950 contemporary papers by Rev. H.T. Ellacombe were sent to the Devonshire Association which included tracings of the footprints and the draft of a letter to The Illustrated London News marked ‘Not for publication’ concerning the event. Ellacombe had even collected samples of the oblong globes of whitish excrement that had been found next to some of the tracks. He sent the samples off to naturalist Richard Owen without receiving a reply. The Ellacombe papers are the oldest surviving documents concerning the case. Another pivotal discovery was The Devil’s Footprints booklet published by G.A. Household which reprints many contemporary newspaper articles.

[Image source]

It was an anonymous letter writer (signed ‘South Devon’) to The Illustrated Times of London who first put forth the idea that the tracks were uniform in size and shape, traveled in single file over the course of 100 miles, surmounted a 14 foot high wall, climbed roofs and crossed the river estuary. The letter writer claimed to be an experienced woodsman, skilled in animal tracking and identification and appeared befuddled as to an explanation for the tracks. According to Rev. Ellacombe’s now recovered papers, ‘South Devon’ was actually a ‘young D’Urban’, a 19-year old resident of Newport House, Countess Wear. Young D’Urban would grow up to be a respectable, reputable man, but youthful ‘enthusiasm’ seems to have gotten the better of him here. It is D’Urban’s falsified account of the events which colors them to this day.

So, was the devil really in Devon on this day 160 years ago? Some believe the entire story was a satirical fabrication, formulated to criticize the local church which had recently changed their standard prayer book. One thing is sure, the event now known as the Devil’s Footprints certainly happened, though not as mysteriously as it is remembered. It’s entirely possible that the prints really were made by unidentified animals, possibly migrating fowl. It seems that it was the unidentifiable nature of the prints that had captured the public’s collective imagination, not the tracks anomalous behavior.

In 2009 the mystery was revisited when a woman awoke to find a track of cloven footprints in her back garden. It would have been the perfect time to come up with a valid explanation for the 1855 case, an investigator looked into hares as the possible culprit. No follow up reports were found.

Sources:

Anybody interested in this mystery event owes a huge debt of gratitude to Mike Dash whose exhaustive 1994 survey of research materials has been an invaluable resource into the study of The Devil’s Footprints.

The Devil’s Hoofmarks (white paper by Mike Dash)

The Complete Books of Charles Fort, pp.305-10.

The Daily Mail

The London Telegraph

BBC

EVERYDAY STRANGE - Elisa Lam, Part II

BEFORE YOU START, BE SURE TO READ PART I

CONCLUSIONS
There are few, if any solid conclusions in this case, mostly pie-in-the-sky speculation. But let's put on our thinking caps and try for a slice of that pie anyway.

This case haunts me. Elisa Lam is like the little sister of a close friend. She's from my town and she's from a culture that I recognize and am closely familiar with. My parents used to eat at her parent's restaurant. And as I mentioned, she's buried in the same cemetery as my young uncle, the same uncle who, with his brother, introduced me to Metallica and AC/DC and Slayer at a time when I was too young to realize that music got any worse than that. I never knew her and would never have in life, but this death hits close to home. I want to know what happened. I want to solve it. And if anybody is responsible I want them found, exposed and punished.

But that's the thing, we don't know if anybody else was involved.

The elevator video haunts many who watch it. There are so many "freaky" behaviors in it that it becomes unforgettable. I believe that she is playing some kind of cat-and-mouse game with an unidentified person, most likely a man that she is attracted to. I also believe that she is wearing his shorts in the video. I originally thought she was wearing a skirt, but she is in fact wearing a man's black shorts, they are large enough on her to fall past her knees at the bottom. She was also not wearing a bra, or anyway, a bra was not found in the water tank along with her body and her other clothes. She was wearing a shirt, a zip-up hoodie, black lace underwear and a man's shorts. This sounds like post-coital attire to me, but that is pure speculation. It does seem odd to me though, that someone as interested in fashion as Elisa would go around in a man's shorts and seemingly hastily thrown on wardrobe without there being some kind of a reason for it. Remember in part one when the autopsy stated there was subcutaneous pooling of blood in her anus, but no trauma. It's possible that this was due to consensual sex. Not saying it was, just saying it's possible.

Watch the video again, her face shows no signs of distress, nothing to indicate she feared imminent harm. Watch the part of the video when she steps outside the elevator. For starters, if she was hiding and truly feared being found, she wouldn't have stepped out of the elevator in the first place. She's acting like someone who is hiding that wants to be found or at the very least, doesn't fear being found. She peeks her head out the door and looks both ways in a noticeable fashion. She hides again, then takes cute, shuffling little steps toward the exit and watches the hallway, then hops out hoping to surprise someone. Then she playfully crab-walks in and back out of the elevator again.

We know that there are two elevators, side-by-side at the old Cecil Hotel (now re-branded as the Stay-on-Main), on the opposite wall between the two elevators is a mirror. When she steps outside the elevator it appears she is facing the mirror and fixing her hair.

The next moment on the video is the one that is truly bizarre. She goes back into the elevator and pushes all the buttons again, I suppose hoping to jam it up. Some speculate that she does this to prevent someone chasing her from using the elevator to catch up to her by sending it on a random journey. But again, she shows no signs of serious distress at being found.

The next part of the video is the one that disturbs most who see it. She makes hand gestures with her fingers spread out. Some people compare the gestures to the way they imagine a grey alien might move, fluidly but in an unrecognizable pattern. Watching the video at 135% speed, removes some of the freakiness of the hand gestures. After watching the video countless times it seems to me that she is calling out to somebody that she can't see. If you look at the selfie picture she took which I posted at the top of Part I, it seems that it was not entirely uncommon for her to make these kind of fingers spread apart hand gestures. It's impossible to know what she was saying when calling out, but it seems like she was getting bored of the hide and seek game and hoping to end it, warning that however was playing with her that the game was about to end.

Immediately after she makes the seemingly bizarre hand gestures, she counts to three. This is the most obvious part of the video but it took quite a few plays before I caught it. She is calling out and counting to three on the fingers of her left hand. She even bends her knees when she touches her fingers, the way one would when playfully doing so.

But after she counts to three and no one appears, she looks both ways down the hall, then plays with her again before walking off, never to be seen alive again.

Is it possible that the elevator footage showed part of a game of hide-and-seek? What if, since Elisa was never found by whoever she was playing with in the elevator, she took the game one step further and attempted to hide in the water tank? Is that a smart, rational decision to make? No, but there is some evidence that she wasn't taking as much of her medication as she might have, potentially throwing her cognitive skills off-balance, as touched on in Part I.

The question then becomes, if she was playing hide-and-seek in the video with an unseen party, why did that person not come forward before or after her body was found? Is it possible that she wasn't actually playing hide-and-seek with anybody, that her play friend was a hallucination? That's a stretch but it's possible.

I wonder about why 54 seconds were edited out of the elevator footage. I've got a couple ideas of why that might be. Either it shows nothing interesting, just an empty hallway and so was chopped out as unimportant, or it shows somebody else, somebody unconnected to the disappearance who just happened to be walking by. If the latter is the case, then that could help explain why Elisa walked away form the elevator at the end of the video as seemingly disappointed or dare I say somewhat embarrassed as she appeared to be. She was calling out, counting to three, her friend didn't re-appear, but somebody else did. In the final analysis though, these ideas are all just speculation. Still, the case haunts me.

I saw a recent news report that police were looking into two hotel employees as possible suspects in Lam's murder, but the source is dubious and I haven't seen a follow-up.

Carmen Yarira Esparza Noriega

One of the strangest elements of all in this case, is the recent discovery of the body of Mexican actress Carmen Yarira Esparza Noriega in a water tank. There are a couple of coincidences between Carmen and Elisa's cases that may lead you to think they are connected. Both women disappeared in February, Elisa in 2013, Carmen in 2014, both were found in water tanks after locals complained of funny or foul tasting water and California and Mexico are relatively close in proximity. It's not without precedent for a killer to move from state to state or even country to country to avoid detection or it may be possible that Carmen's murderer was inspired by the seamier details of Elisa's case. I'll provide a bunch of links to Carmen's story at the end of the "sources" section.

I've barely scratched the surface here. I haven't talked about the Cecil Hotel's checkered history, which includes multiple suicides and stays by serial killers including Richard Ramirez. There are many low income long-term residents of the hotel at least one of which is a well-known sex offender who was a resident at the hotel at the time of Elisa's disappearance. He was on many videos about the case including one on CNN, and the news either failed to mention or didn't realize just who they were talking to. Apparently he was one of the most vocal residents to complain about the water. At the time, the hotel was facing possible re-zoning and he had a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. There is speculation that he and another long-term resident acting as his accomplice staged the murder, but I don't buy it.

I didn't talk about the other bizarre coincidences surrounding the circumstances of this case, like how it resembles the story of Japanese horror film Dark Water, right down to the actress playing the mother in the film wearing a similar looking wardrobe to Elisa in the elevator video. I didn't talk about the Tuberculosis detection kit, called LAM-ELISA that was being used during the time of her disappearance in the area to help stifle a possible outbreak among the homeless. I didn't talk about the last known witness to see her alive being a store clerk at a bookstore called ... The Last Bookstore. And there are more little things, little echoes that jab away at you until you are unsettled enough to believe that Elisa Lam was killed by fate itself.

Elisa was a real person, a beautiful girl with self-image problems who battled depression and felt isolated in her own active mind. Many if not all young people feel depressed or self-conscious, I wish I could have been there to tell her that it's perfectly normal to feel that way, at any age. But I can't.

Sources:
It's impossible to list all the sources, but here were some of the major ones.
Elisa Lam's tumblr blog
Elisa Lam's blogspot
The autopsy report
Yelp listing for Cecil Hotel
Current Yelp listing for renamed Stay on Main hotel
Crisis Forums (a terrific active chat about the Lam case)
Websleuths translation of Chinese forum about Lam

The case of Carmen Yarira Esparza Noriega:

The Mirror UK
New York Daily News
Fox News Latino

The Daily Mail
Milenio

EVERYDAY STRANGE - Elisa Lam, Part I

"I’m going out tonight

I really hope no creeper comes near me

Seriously though

those Italian and Mexican guys go after you STRONG

Show the slightest inclination and they hound you"

-Elisa Lam, January 26, 2013

Elisa Lam selfie [Image source]

THE STORY GOES LIKE THIS:

[Image source]

Elisa Lam, a 21 year old student from Vancouver, BC was traveling north up the west coast from San Diego. She arrived in Los Angeles on January 26, 2013, and was staying at the notorious Cecil Hotel in the city's infamous skid row. She was last seen on the evening of January 31, 2013. A missing persons report was filed but police had no leads. On February 19 her naked body was found floating face up in one of the four 1000 gallon water tanks (northeastern tank) located on the roof of the Cecil Hotel, along with her clothing which had apparently been thrown into the tank with her. She was only found after residents complained of poor water pressure. After the fact, residents realized that the tap water in the building had recently been discolored and tasted oddly sweet. After cutting a hole in the side of the tank to retrieve the body, it was widely reported that police quickly determined that foul play was not a factor in Lam's death, but they went on record to deny this.

An autopsy revealed no external trauma to the body and that her remains seemed in all ways unremarkable but it did state that her anus showed subcutaneous pooling of blood. The autopsy also failed to detect significant drugs or alcohol in her system at the time of death and found no evidence of pill capsule remains in her stomach but found fluid in the lungs. The Medical Examiner's conclusion was death by drowning. The LAPD released a video reported to be from February 1 (see below), apparently showing Elisa Lam exhibiting some bizarre behavior in the hotel elevator leading to wild speculation about what might have happened in the moments leading up to her entering the water tank (more on that in Part II). The police didn't believe that the video showed Elisa being chased or in distress. After being identified by her family, her body was flown back to Vancouver and she was buried in Burnaby's Forest Lawn Cemetery, just down the street from Metrotown (incidentally, the same cemetery where my uncle is buried, who was 20 years old at the time of his death). Watch the elevator footage below:



THE INVESTIGATION:

Very few details of the police investigation into this strange death were revealed to the media. In June the LAPD ruled the death accidental and that's been pretty much it. But the security camera footage raised more questions than answers and captured the darkest parts of the imagination of the world.

It's hard not to hear the story about how she was found and then watch this video and not be creeped out in some way.

The popular story going around at the time was that there was no entrance into the water tank, that either the entrance was sealed or welded shut or that there was no entrance point large enough for a person to squeeze through to begin with. This is not true.

The misconception most likely came from the fact that the police and fire departments decided to cut a hole into the side of the tank to retrieve the body. Some people perhaps jumped to the conclusion that they had to do this because there was no other way to enter the tank. The truth is there was no better way to retrieve it. A good friend of mine and his father became volunteer Coast Guards who would patrol the waters of the south arm of the Fraser River between Dyke Road in Richmond and River Road in Ladner. One night, his father had to retrieve a 'floater' from the river. As they were hauling the body out of the water, the floater's face slipped off. Poor Elisa Lam had been in that water tank for close to three weeks, the autopsy also reports that her body was already undergoing what is known as skin slippage. The entrance hatch which is located on the top of the tank, is roughly 15 by 15 inches wide and would have created a logistical nightmare for removing the body without potentially damaging either it or any other associated evidence. The only real mystery regarding Lam's entrance point is how she closed the hatch lid behind her, or if it was someone else who closed it.

It was also widely reported that the only way onto the roof was through an alarmed door, and that the alarm was never triggered. Again, this is entirely false.

As a pair of intrepid amateur sleuths documented with their video camera just about anyone can get onto the roof of the Cecil Hotel at any time via one of two fire escapes located on the outside of the building, accessible through the hallway window of any floor, or through one of at least two roof access hatches, available through the fifteenth floor.

Another thing that is widely misunderstood is that long-term residents of the hotel use the roof as a "smoke pit", they go out onto the roof so that they don't have to go 15 floors down to street level just to have a cigarette. Another interesting thing that those same amateur sleuths found was a collection of empty beer bottles stuffed into nooks and crannies around the water tank. They seem to think that these bottles were somehow overlooked by the LAPD. Most likely, investigators either collected any trace samples they needed on scene or didn't find them relevant.

One of the more disturbing aspects of amateurs investigation into the strange death of Elisa Lam is the online witch-hunt of extreme metal vocalist Morbid. Speculation turned against him when it was discovered that not only had he stayed at the Cecil Hotel, but had posted a video of himself onto youtube pretending to shoot pedestrians on the street below through his hotel room window (he has since removed the video and deleted his youtube account). He writes dark poetry and even writes from the perspective of a murderer. But when Lam disappeared, he hadn't been at the hotel for over a year and was reportedly not even in the country at that time, let alone the state, city or same hotel. One of the worst marks against him is that he is Mexican and in one alarming post on her tumblr blog, Elisa made statements about being hounded by latin men:

I’m going out tonight
I really hope no creeper comes near me
Seriously though
those Italian and Mexican guys go after you STRONG
Show the slightest inclination and they hound you

Regardless of what one may think of Morbid or his music, he doesn't deserve to be accused of a crime he never committed. No one does. The deeper you look into Morbid the more he becomes an apparent dead-end.

On her Ether Fields blog, Elisa discussed an ongoing battle with depression and that she had been prescribed numerous medications for "bipolar disorder". She had her medications with her (they are listed in the autopsy) but didn't seem to be taking them regularly or at least as often as she might have. Based on the available evidence, this may be the best clue there is as to what might have happened to her. Then again, it might not.

One of the strangest elements of the case was that elevator video released by the LAPD. The timestamp has been redacted and nobody seems to have any idea why. But the timestamp is only partially redacted, you can still make out the numbers ticking away, you just can't see what they are. Online sleuths studying the video have discovered that about 54 seconds of footage was cut from the footage between the time that Elisa exits the elevator and when the doors close. It was later found that the video has been slowed down, again for unknown reasons. When watching the video at 135% "normal" speed her actions and behavior get a little less spooky, she seems less frightened and more playful. There is a side-by-side comparison of the video at two different speeds that you can watch right here:



A well-known body language expert reviewed the footage and came to the conclusion that Elisa was acting playfully and shows a low level of anxiety, the kind one might show when thinking about or interacting with somebody they are sexually attracted to. It's an interesting analysis and well worth a read. If this is true, the person does not appear in the video nor have they come forward publicly.

CONTINUE TO PART II

EVERYDAY STRANGE - The Butler Street Poltergeist

THE STORY GOES LIKE THIS

[Image source]

Between January 6 and 13, 1959 on Butler Street in Springfield, Massachusetts, 80 year old Mrs. Papineau (no first name is given) and her 13 year old grandson Wayne witness unexplained window breakages in the elderly lady's home. Before the windows shatter, the two hear thumping or rapping noises in the house. A total of 39 windows are busted in the span of a week including one which exploded in front of Mrs. Papineau with no apparent cause. Police are called to investigate but they find no evidence of criminality. The glazier who came to replace the broken windows found that the glass had invariably fallen into the house, meaning whatever was shattering the windows came from the outside. He also said that the windows seemed to have "been pushed in from the center with considerable force". It should also be noted that some of the replacement glass was thicker than the original panes and broke only to have to be replaced a second time.

THE INVESTIGATION
After the police investigation petered out, an architect and part-time paranormal investigator or "self-styled authority on poltergeists" as the Milwaukee Journal would have it, named John C. Parker took over. He said that he was "pretty sure poltergeists are to blame." He set up a recording thermometer near the bathroom window where three panes had been broken to prove that sudden drops in temperature showed evidence of ghosts. Not exactly the most balanced method of investigation to say the least.

The police did return to interview the 13 year old grandson and discovered "that he had been experimenting with a Christmas chemistry set". When told Parker added, "The only way that anyone could break a window with that set would be to throw the whole thing through the window." Touché!

CONCLUSIONS
After all the hoopla of the week of 39 broken panes and the story spreading nationally, Mrs. Papineau did not experience anymore disturbances, or at the very least, she never reported them. As for a cause of the phenomenon, one could pull any number of explanations from their proverbial butt: chemistry sets, trucks going by, small localized earthquakes, some acoustic phenomenon of local origin, some kind of localized atmospheric pressure inversion (okay that one doesn't make sense). At this point a poltergeist explanation is as good as any other.

The case remains a mystery.

SOURCES:
Milwaukee Journal - January 15, 1959
Daytona Beach Morning Journal - January 15, 1959
Binghamton Press - January 16, 1959

EVERYDAY STRANGE - Stanford Kentucky Abductions

l-r: Louise Smith, Elaine Thomas, Mona Stafford [Source]

THE STORY GOES LIKE THIS:
January 6, 1976, Stanford, Kentucky, 11:15 PM - Louise Smith, Elaine Thomas and Mona Stafford are in high spirits getting into Smith's 1967 Chevy Nova in the parking lot of the Redwood restaurant off Route 27. The women had been celebrating the 36th birthday of Stafford, but it should be noted here that none of the women consumed any alcohol. As Smith drove south on Highway 78 through the town of Hustonville towards Liberty, where the women all lived, the women saw what looked to Mona like an airplane on fire and crashing. She thought that if they sped up, they might be able to arrive at the crash scene in time to help out. The bright, red object then descended towards them at treetop level. At this point, Smith lost control of the vehicle, which felt to the women like it was going 85 mph. Smith later recalled that, "my foot wasn't even on the gas pedal." The steering wheel also seemed to be locked as Smith couldn't move it even with the help of Stafford, though the vehicle conformed to the contours of the road.

The object tailed the car for a little while, past a drive-in theater, then came in close on the driver's side. The women could now see that the object wasn't "bright, red" at all, but a metallic disc ringed by red lights with a dome top and blinking yellow light on the bottom. The metallic craft then zoomed ahead of the car before shining a white light into the car's interior. It's at this point that the interior of the car seemed to fill with a hazy fog which caused a burning sensation in the women's eyes. The car then seemed to back itself into the entrance of a large field, between two stone railings.

Next thing they knew, they were back on the road to Liberty with a red tint to their skin, as though they had been sunbathing. They were confused and suffering from visible burns on their skin, when Mona went to see her doctor he said that it looked like she had been exposed to radiation. The paint on the hood of Mrs. Smith's car had bubbled and the lights wouldn't work. By the time they got home it was 1:20 AM. The entire distance they traveled was 35 miles, a 45 minute trip.

THE INVESTIGATION:

Mona Stafford drawing [Image Source]

That night, unsure of how to proceed, the women called the local police department and told them their story. The police offered no help. The next day, the local Navy recruitment office was called, who were equally reticent to respond or aid in any way. The Navy recruitment office did, however, contact the local news media, who made front page headlines of the women's experience.

It was through this publicity that MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) member Jerry Black caught wind of the Stanford Kentucky Abductions and he contacted the women. They were reluctant to speak with him, unwilling to relive the experience, but eventually they agreed to meet with Peggy Schnell, who represented the organization.

All three women were undergoing symptoms which might today have been recognized as Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. Elaine Thomas reported that Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Stafford were close to their psychological breaking points and all three had begun chain-smoking. Mrs. Stafford in particular experienced periods of vigilance and psychological difficulty leaving the house.

It's because our accounts of the women's experience come from this UFO-friendly source, and not from local or federal authorities that doubt is cast upon all or part of the story.

But, according to Mrs. Schnell of MUFON, the women appeared genuine. Something strange seemed to have happened to them that night. Aside from the women's obviously distressed behavior, there was physical evidence. Mrs. Smith had a half-dollar sized pinkish-grey blotch on the nape of her neck. All three women reported general ill health, but apparently, the "details" were held back by MUFON, in fear of losing the women's trust. (It should be noted here that Elaine Thomas died around about a year after the experience in 1977, though I was not able to find a cause of death.)

But that was only the beginning of a bizarre turn of events for Mrs. Smith. Her alarm clock broke when she touched it, the minute hand of her wrist watch spun around the dial fast as the second hand and her car suddenly developed electrical problems. Also, Mrs. Smith's pet parakeet began to withdraw and exhibit frightened behavior in her presence. Other people did not elicit such a reaction from the bird and when Mrs. Smith was brought into the presence of other birds, they reacted the same way. Mrs. Smith's parakeet died in March 1976.

Dr. Leo Sprinkle [Source]

Soon, J. Allen Hynek got involved in the case, as did a Dr. Leo Sprinkle who conducted regression therapy with each of the three women in order to account for the 80 minutes of missing time they experienced in the car that night. Apparently, the women became more and more reticent about the entire investigation, reportedly (by MUFON) fearing that the story might break nationally. The women's fears were allayed with the promise that the details accrued from the therapy session would not be released until the women felt comfortable about it. The initial therapy session for Mona Stafford took place on March 7, 1976.

After the session, but while still in a post-hypnotic state, Mrs. Stafford was shown several pictures of aliens by the MUFON team. It should be noted that this was the first time that extraterrestrial beings had entered the conversation. Stafford settled on one of the pictures saying that she could see the image in her mind, but it didn't "seem solid. It comes and goes ... I mean, fades and reappears like in a fog. It's eyes are far apart and at the bottom ... the chin ... is like that drawing." (my emphasis)

Once the session had ended, the MUFON team had no more funds left to continue researching the case. But on July 1 they enlisted the aid of that most-infamous of sensational American tabloids, The National Enquirer, who agreed to fund further research into the case and pay the three women for exclusive rights to the story. Part of the Enquirer deal was that the women were to undergo a lie detector test. The three women each underwent a polygraph under the direction of Detective James Young of the Lexington police department. All three passed.

As regression therapy sessions continued, the events of January 6 were filled in and elaborated on. All three were seated or placed in different venues within the unidentified craft, or strapped to different devices, but they all reported being scanned and probed, though not sexually. Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Stafford also recalled the application of a warm liquid to the face and body. But the story only gets weirder.

The women began to describe the alien beings they encountered with varying accounts of their appearance, but they were usually described in ethereal terms about shadowy figures who floated by them and floating eyeballs which watched them from above, including one eye that was purple and shot lightning. The alien beings themselves were described as four feet tall without mouths and communicated telepathically.

CONCLUSIONS:

The Stanford Kentucky Abductions is touted as one of those "best evidence" cases by UFO enthusiasts, but it is anything but as it doesn't hold up to even the most cursory glance of scrutiny.

This case is considered one of the best ever for evidence of actual UFO abductions but it rests on very little actual evidence, if any. All the evidence in this case is anecdotal and what's worse, the overall investigation has been tainted by the dubious practice of regression therapy. Regression therapy is the psychiatric equivalent of faith healing. Because the anecdotal evidence, lacking corroborative elements, it's easy to accuse the women of making the entire story up and even inflicting themselves with burns to back up their claims, if the injuries were actually present at all and not just another made-up element of the story. We don't really know that Mrs. Stafford went to see the doctor and that the doctor claimed she looked like she had been exposed to radiation, we have to go on her word, and that can be a precarious ledge to balance on indeed.

I find it dubious that the UFO people claim repeatedly that the women haven't profited from the misadventure, nor have they sought publicity. Quite, the opposite, supposedly. By most favorable accounts, the women shunned publicity at all turns. But we know that this isn't true because it is stated openly within MUFON's own documents that the women did in fact profit from this story by offering exclusive rights to it to the National Enquirer of all places and their involvement with news media has continued until quite recently (see video below).

In the end, the women themselves, and their conviction about their story is the best evidence there is for this case. The women's conviction is vetted by a lie detector test, which are arguably somewhat useful as an auxiliary to a police investigation, but are absolutely useless in a legal case i.e. establishing proof.

It should be noted that Louise described many different forms for her alien abductors, it wasn't until months later that her descriptions began to conform to those of her friends accounts. And let it be said once more for emphasis that at no point did any of the women mention aliens until Mona Stafford was asked specifically to identify aliens by the MUFON investigators.

Another thing to consider is that most UFO abduction stories involving cars traveling down lonely roads seem to take place in a single cluster of time from the late 1960's through the 1980's, with most stories featuring very little in common in the way of details, for the more famous cases anyway. It seems entirely plausible that the three women were trying to capitalize on the bizarre phenomenon, but one must always wonder about paranormal hoaxers: of all things to do, of all ways to try to make money, why that?

It would be nice if there had been a corroborating witness during the event, a feature that other abduction / close encounter stories have had. There are alleged witnesses who also saw a UFO over the town of Stanford of similar design to that described by the women at about or around 11:30 PM on that night, including two teenagers out for a joyride, but the names of many of the alleged witnesses have never been identified as they are said to not want to come forward. It's the kind of corroborating detail that could be drawn out from thin air by anyone at any time.

I'm wary of calling the three women complete liars however, but based on the reports of MUFON the investigation into this case was bungled from the very start. I'm open to the possibility that the women did see or experience something strange that night, but what that might be is unknown. Stranger things have happened that didn't include four foot tall telepathic beings. The only confirmed truth in this story is that strange things happen to people who can't explain what happened to them and it could happen to you on any given day, the everyday strange.



SOURCES:
MUFON Journal January 1977
UFO Casebook
APRO Bulletin, Vol. 25, No. 4 (October 1976)
Central Kentucky News, 09/24/2010
Kentucky.com about 'High Strangeness' play