Category: The Unknown

The Mystery Spot and Bigfoot Madness

August 15, 2026

We drove up to Lake George today. I hadn’t been out much since my surgery and it had been a few years so it was time again to go and check out our local tourist trap.

Postcards have more or less disappeared from our city, so I was happy the souvenir shop just as you drive into town came through with a nice selection. Maybe I sent you one with a surprise ‘attached’…

When I was planning this trip I found the ‘Lake George Mystery Spot’ listed on the map. It was described as a location where you can hear a mysterious echo if you stand in a very specific point. We had to try!

It works! If you stand in the very center of the blue lake painted on this concrete circle, face the lake, and speak you (and only you) hear a surprisingly loud echo of your voice. If you take a single step in any direction or turn away from the lake the echo disappears! It’s a true mystery (maybe…) and was worth the trip alone 🙂

We then walked the main street to check out the souvenir shops. Many of them are infected with 3D printed trash, bootleg toys or AI art t-shirts but one curious feature is the preponderance of Bigfoot items. The very first shop we went into had this giant robotic Bigfoot fortune teller (a version of the old Zoltar machine) which gave a tepid (albeit spoken) fortune and sadly did not vend a fortune since the printer was broken.

Immediately behind it was a selection of Bigfoot t-shirts which surprised me even before I noticed they had an entire aisle of them. Back during Covid we saw a sprinkling of Bigfoot items appearing in these gift shops, but today it has ballooned to a near-unbelievable level. Almost every type of clothing was available in a Bigfoot version!

We saw Bigfoot water bottles, beer holders and pens. Towels, thongs, swimmers, hats and sunglasses. Shot glasses, ashtrays, bongs, stickers and knives. Toy cars, picture frames, bibs, shovels and cups.

Cards, dog toys and notebooks. Posters, jewelry, wall art, socks, books and postcards. Squishies, cellphone stands, keychains, magnets and lamps. Statues, flashlights, walking sticks, slippers and candy. I could go on and on: there seemed to be Bigfoot everything!

How about a massive inflatable Dallas Cowboys Bigfoot lawn ornament?

Or a metal sign (one of many) to hang outside your home? This store had multiple Bigfoot garden ornaments as well, in case you run out of places to display Bigfoot inside your home.

And if your love of Bigfoot transcends even completely redecorating your home, why not give ‘Snake’ a call and swap Bigfoot stories? (If you look into this guy online, you’ll be entering a deep and fascinating rabbit hole…)

If you’re wondering, Bigfoot sightings are basically nonexistent in the area, which apparently is more famous for being a ‘hotbed of ghosts’. Maybe next time we visit all the Bigfoot stuff will be replaced by ghost souvenirs 🙂

The above pic is just to illustrate that the shops weren’t completely overrun with Bigfoot, and had space for some weird K-Pop Demon Hunters bootleg trash as well!

We had planned on visiting the Frankenstein horror museum but the town was so busy it would have been too crowded, so once we were done with Bigfoot shopping we shared a slice of pizza, a giant shaved ice, and headed home. We probably got a little sunburned, but it was a fun trip.

The Grinning Man

April 19, 2025

One of the more bizarre incidences in UFO lore is eerie because of how unusual it is, and because to this day those that investigated it have never been able to provide a conclusive explanation.

It was November 2, 1966, and sewing machine salesman Woodrow Derenberger was driving home at night on an empty road in rural West Virginia when he saw a UFO (although he didn’t use the term when he reported the incident) blocking the road ahead. He stopped, and watched a man emerge from the craft and approach his car.

Derenberger would later say the man – who was smiling – was entirely normal in appearance and “courteous and friendly”. But he never moved his face when he spoke: all communication was telepathic. The smiling man identified himself as ‘Cold’ and said he came from “another country” and was not harmful. He told Derenberger he would contact him again and asked him to tell others he had been contacted.

Derenberger did exactly that, and reported the encounter to police the same evening. A media circus followed, including a live TV interview and reports in newspapers nationwide. Others would report seeing UFOs in the area, some said they’d even seen Cold but driven past without stopping and two children claimed to have seen a grinning man fitting Cold’s description several days before Derenberger’s sighting.

In the years that followed, Derenberger gave a full name for the figure – Indrid Cold – and claimed that not only had Cold continued regular visits but that he had identified himself as an alien from a planet called Lanulos, and even taken Derenberger to the planet multiple times. Derenberger gave talks on his experiences, and even co-wrote a (poor selling) book about it in 1971 entitled ‘Visitors From Lanulos’.

In time – mostly due to attention from paranormal researcher John Keel – Indrid Cold entered the UFO mythology, and would become linked with the Mothman cryptid. As these things do, the character evolved in myth and has become somewhat of a cryptid himself (called ‘The Grinning Man’), since appearing in movies, TV shows, books and games. Indrid Cold has long outlived his ‘creator’ and the character’s identity these days runs the gamut from friendly space alien to extradimensional devil.

In some ways Derenberger seems like another George Adamski or Howard Menger – two men who had obtained a measure of fame and fortune from their alleged alien encounters. But Derenberger had apparently not heard of either, was not particularly interested in UFOs, and those that interviewed him at the time found him genuine and not motivated by profit. Furthermore, Derenberger most decidedly did not benefit from his tale: the notoriety and attention made him paranoid and depressed, lost him his job, ruined his marriage, and eventually left him delusional.

And yet he never recanted, and to his grave in 1990 always claimed it was true. He seemed to genuinely believe he had been visited many times over decades by a mysterious smiling telepath named Indrid Cold, who had shown him wonders other men could only dream of.

Fancy, madness or the truth? With Derenberger gone and Cold now part of folklore, does it matter?

My UFO Sighting

September 8, 2022

Earlier this year when I was in Australia, I saw a UFO. Or perhaps three UFO’s. I didn’t write about it then because I had forgotten, so it’s time to remedy that.

It was late May or early June. I was walking along the Newcastle Harbour foreshore toward Nobby’s. It was bright and sunny, and there were lots of people walking and cycling. I was taking some photos of the ferry, so I was approaching the dock from the west. All of a sudden, three silver objects noiselessly flew quickly over me.

Here are my impressions:

They were moving fairly quickly in a roughly eastern direction out to sea, and there was no noise at all.
They were silver or at the least light gray or white. They seemed reflective, and while they seemed elongated it was difficult to determine their exact shape.
They seemed to twist and turn around their individual axes, and the trio of objects seemed to rotate together or at least turn in formation.
The more I watched them the more I wasn’t sure I was looking at multiple objects or one (possibly connected by parts I could not see).
I couldn’t determine their height. I couldn’t tell if they were small and closer to the ground or large and higher up.

The above photo shows their path as best I recall. I watched them for maybe 30 seconds, and even tried to take some photos (in which they weren’t visible). Due to the bright sun and the reflective nature of the objects they became difficult to see as they moved away from me, and I lost site of them probably around the time they left the harbour.

I wasn’t the only one who saw them, since I observed two men ahead of me pointing towards them and watching as well.

At the time, I had no idea what I was watching. In my mind I assumed they were simply something that I could not identify, but not for one instant did I consider they were something no-one could identify. For me therefore, they were literally UFOs, but I never considered that they were UFOs for everyone. I was certainly intrigued by them, and wished I had taken some video, but to be honest they left my mind quickly. I didn’t even write about them on a postcard, which seems unusual.

Before writing this post I did a bit of research, and confirmed that there was no scheduled fighter jet activity from Williamstown on or about Newcastle in late May or early June. Even though nothing about the objects suggested ‘jets’ to me, I wanted to consider the most obvious explanation. Thinking about the objects now, my guess would be drones, although I’m not aware of drones that can fly so fast and with such range, and as I said I couldn’t estimate the size when I saw them. I suppose other exotic explanations may exist: I did see a gyrocopter flying over Newcastle baths only a few days prior!

I was reminded of this incident after speaking with a colleague about UFOs. I was struck by the fact that this had happened to me, and I definitely saw physical things (or a thing) that I could not – and still can’t – identify flying over a major city, and it didn’t seem like a big deal and was forgotten by the end of the day. This gives me a new perspective on UFO sightings: how often do others see curious objects in the sky, wonder for a minute or so and then just go on with their lives?

To the Novocastrians reading: have you ever seen anything like this? If so, what was it?

Robot Claw