PA paranormal history bent on peculiar

April 24, 8:23 PMParanormal News ExaminerRoger Marsh

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Artist Robert Roach Mothman sculpture in Point Pleasant, WV.

Few regions in the country can boast a paranormal past as peculiar as Pennsylvania. And yet the national attention here is as quiet as the stories are odd.

Myths, mysteries and urban legends are plentifull just about everywhere, and some pieces of the country are particularly odd - like Nevada housing Area 51.

Few paranormal cases are three dimensional or physical by description, as opposed to the more common apparition sightings and EVP captures. West Virginia has its Mothman creature from 1966 to 1967, something looking like a man, but with moth-like wings and large reflective red eyes. Arkansas has the Fouke Monster, a Bigfoot type creature seen in and around Fouke, Arkansas, since the 1950s - immortalized in the 1972 docudrama, Legend of Boggy Creek.

More paranormal cases involving seemingly physical things include what we commonly know as cattle mutilations - possibly traced back to the Snippy the Horse mutilation from Sept. 7, 1967, in Colorado. While cattle seem to be the current choice of mutilations, other animals have had their day in paranormal history. A most recent case, also from Colorado, was investigated by fellow Paranormal Science Examiner Alejandro Rojas in a series of stories.

While this list of physical cases is not exhaustive, my final example is the mysterious Thunderbird - gigantic birds with huge wing spans and enormous lifting power - including the ability to pick up and snatch a human off of the ground.

Paranormal Invasion

But Pennsylvania battled a mysterious two-fold paranormal invasion there from 1973 to 1974 that baffled many police agencies. The bizarre activity was so strong and so frightening, that at one point during its peak, local investigators actually feared further escalation.

In the early 70s, UFOs did not receive much mainstream attention - the ridicule factor hung tight and most news flowed from fringe magazines or stuffy research journals. The Bigfoot creature was extended an even more remote space in American media, popping up in occasional fiction and other places very clear of mainstream.

Ufologist Stan Gordon, of Greensburg, PA, studied and tracked the UFO phenomena since the late 60s, not long after the UFO crash at Kecksburg on Dec. 9, 1965, a short drive from his hometown. Now a young man in his 20s by 1973, Gordon was known to police agencies as the go-to guy for UFO reports, and he had set up his radio room and research center at his home.

Photo: Stan Gordon today in his Pennsylvania Radio Room.

The first calls into his UFO Hotline were just that - UFO reports. But soon the UFO reports began to increase - and increase rapidly. He had to expand his team. And then the second wave hit.

Calls began to come in describing a large, hairy beast with glowing red eyes - a typical description of the Bigfoot creature. Even the police agencies sent the Bigfoot calls his way. If they did know what to do with a UFO report, it was clear they were unsure how to investigate a Bigfoot sighting.

UFO and Bigfoot sighting cases numbered into the hundreds. Although they could be described as wide scattered and could be found in several southwestern, PA, counties - the majority of cases were all coming out of Westmoreland County, just south of Pittsburgh.

Photo: Cast of a Bigfoot footprint discovered by Stan Gordon. Stan Gordon image.

Check back for more on paranormal Pennsylvania and exactly what happened here in 1973 and 1974. Stan Gordon and myself have completed a book on the subject - Silent Invasion: The Pennsylvania UFO and Bigfoot Casebook - available soon. For the first time ever, the book will allow the public an inside peak at this investigator's journal as he probed these many cases of both UFO and Bigfoot sightings over a period of more than one year.

Next up: A case of high strangeness - the very unusual UFO-Bigfoot case from Uniontown, PA. Listen in to this 8-part video series where one of Gordon's fellow investigators - George Lutz - retells this 1973 case for the first time.