5 Interesting Mysteries that have been Ruined by Wackos.

5 - Bigfoot

There are stories in every wooded area of the U.S. of some big hairy monster that roams around and scares people. There are photographs and a very convincing video to accompany this mystery and make it a healthy slice of Americana. I never get tired of hearing new stories about Bigfoot.

The Problem:

Did you know that Bigfoot is invisible? That he wanders in and out of our dimension? Oh, brother, now you know why real scientists (for the most part) will not touch Bigfoot with a ten foot pole. You can't get into this conversation without being seen as one of these guys who takes the legend too far.


4 - Ancient Astronauts

Ancient civilizations sometimes drew odd things on their cave/temple walls that, to us, resemble aliens or flying saucers. Some of these sites are very interesting and make me wonder if UFOs did indeed visit our planet. It's far out, but it is possible...right? It is, at least, an interesting idea.

The Problem:

Erich Anton Paul von Däniken. Aside from having the most impossible name ever, he has both promoted and, simultaneously, ruined this concept. Rather than discuss the possibility that aliens visited our planet, he insists that everything from the ancient world was the product of aliens.

I saw this guy on a TV special that was very interesting...at first. He pointed out a few artifacts that looked like alien ships and I thought it was fascinating, but he went on to say that the Egyptians had mastered DNA cloning and that the sphinx was designed after one of their animal/human hybrids. Yeah, now if you talk about acient astronauts at all people will think you are one of his followers and no one will listen to you. Thanks, Erich.

3 - The Bloop

The Bloop is one of the neatest mysteries I have evers studied. In 1997, underwater microphones 3000 miles apart picked up the same sounds. These sounds were louder than any other sound in the ocean and have not been heard before or since. The sound has been identified as something biological, so some creature was lurking around making this noise, but no known creature is capable of make a noise nearly this loud. So, what was it?

The Problem:

Fans of H.P. Lovecraft's weird fiction noticed a similarity between this and a creature from his books called Cthulhu. This could be seen as a charming coincidence, but Lovecraft fans have taken over the discussion so that most of the websites concerning this very interesting incident are flooded with pictures of Cthulhu. This is a real mystery, a real event took place that we can't understand, and the fiction fans have taken the discussion away from us to play games.

2 - UFO's

People see UFO's every day. The Anomalist updates each day with new paranormal stories and UFO sightings are always abundant. Many UFO stories turn out to be nothing but not all of them, some of them are darned interesting and should be investigated.

The problem:

The New Age movement and the Reptoid movement.

The New Ager's moved into this subject by saying that UFOs were here to enlighten us. They insisted that UFO abductees experienced a moment of epiphany and that we should meditate on the meaning of these things and hope that UFO's could bring us to a higher understanding or existence. The New Agers neglected to notice that their metaphysical view of UFO's really didn't fit in with the the UFO stories that came from supposed abductees whose stories were filled with fear and stories of physical experimentation.

And, we cannot forget the reptoids. Harold Ickes sells a lot of books telling people about the reptoids, lizard men who live in the Earth and take on human form. They take on human form in order to affect our politics and Dick Cheney and Bill Clinton are both supposed reptoids. The reptoids are our last line of defense agains the Greys (UFO aliens) and some parts of our government are aligned with the Greys instead of the reptoid, causing an internal civil war against the alien groups. Or something like that.

If you follow UFO stories, your friends will think you are either a New Age mystic who wants to worship the alien exhaust vents or a conspiracy nut who thinks Greys designed DVD players in Area 51.

1 - Dinosaurs

We don't know everything about Dinosaurs, in my opinion we know less than we think. Each generation makes up new ideas about them and gives us new drawings and preconcpetions about their attitudes or habits, but these theories do more to tell us about the mindset of the researcher than the actual dinosaurs. Dinosaurs, in effect, are like a rorschach test for modern writers. Today's scientists, bombarded with political correctness and civil activism, have insisted that dinosaurs were not barbaric creatures, but loving family types that exhibited higher emotions.

But, did dinosaurs ever live with man? African tribes tell stories of the river stopping behomoths that slay elephants. Native American stories tell similar stories (without elephants). Is it possible? Surely, we can see it as a possibility without getting into any ridiculous arguments...right?

The Problem:

Yeah, right. For some reason, the insistence that Dinosaurs did not live with man makes some Christians emerge from their hiding places and shout out war cries against the world of science. Meanwhile, the idea that they did live with man, even in a limited capacity as a lost species, makes certain members of the non-Christian community feel threatened and send out their own hatred toward Christians. No one remembers who fired the first shot in this ridiculous debate, but we are unlikely to learn anything new and concrete about dinosaurs in the next 5 billion years because every discovery or theory just creates more fighting.

To those of you fighting over this, on both sides, you should all be ashamed of yourselves. It's just dinosaurs for cryin' out loud.