Author Denver Michaels

In my book  Detours Into the Paranormal: Atlantic City Road Trip ,  I wrote at length about the Garden State’s most famous cryptid: the Jersey Devil . The creature has a long history in New Jersey dating back to Colonial times and sightings occur to the present day. However, the early-1900s were, without a doubt, the Jersey devil’s heyday.  The following article titled “Body of "Jersey Devil" Found in Woods,” appeared in the  Palladium-Item,  a Richmond, Indiana, newspaper on October 20, 1909: If anybody ever doubted that a "Jersey devil' left its uncanny footprints in the snow of this and adjoining states last winter, here is the proof that the scare was never due to highballs. It is the carcass of the queerest animal ever seen, a beast that is not listed in any natural history ever read by any one of this section.  The remains, still in good shape, were found by Morris Cabinsky, and another boy of Roebling, in the woods near Kinkona, this afternoon, and are now

I have devoted much of my attention to the discoveries of diminutive skeletons in and around White County, Tennessee during the 1800s. Collectively known as the "Tennessee Pygmies," the tiny finds have their share of detractors, as well as a few folks such as myself that believe the mystery warrants a closer look. What most folks familiar with the subject may not realize is that small, or "pygmy skeletons," have been recovered elsewhere such as Kentucky and Ohio . Case in point, The Gentlemen’s Magazine ran this piece about a pygmy graveyard in the Antiquarian news section of their August 1837 issue: A short distance from Cochocton [sic], Ohio, U.S., a singular ancient burying ground has lately been discovered. “It is situated,” says a writer in Silliman’s Journal, “On one of those elevated, gravelly alluvions, so common on the rivers of the West. From some remains of wood, still apparent in the earth around the bones, the bodies seem all to have been deposited i

In late summer 2022, I spent close to two weeks in Wisconsin . During my time in the Badger State, I visited Lake Mills. Lake Mills is a nice town and sits on the shores of Rock Lake. Shortly after arriving in Lake Mills, I stopped off for a Chicago-style hot dog, and then made my way over to the lake. I knew it was a long shot, but I hoped to catch a glimpse of the fabled Rock Lake Monster. The Rock Lake Monster, or “Rocky” for short, is dark brown in color with spots, almost like a pickerel. It has eyes similar to a snake, a horse-like head, and a long neck. Rock Lake Monster Sightings Sightings of the Rock Lake Monster go all the way back to 1867 when several witnesses claimed they saw a saurian creature in the water. In one encounter, the creature hissed at a man. On August 31, 1882, a local newspaper, the Lake Mills Spike, reported a frightening meeting between two boaters and the Rock Lake Monster. The traumatic encounter began when Ed McKenzie and D.W. Seybert were racing one a

In today’s blog post, I thought I would share this account from 1880 of nine-foot giants in Ohio. Of equal interest to the giant discoveries is a sandstone tablet found among the burials with “two lines of hieroglyphs” inscribed upon it. I have written at length in the past of excavators finding strange tablets inside of mounds containing giant bones. The Marion Daily Star told the story of the tablet and enormous skeletal remains found in a mound in Ohio : MARION DAILY STAR , JULY 14, 1880 REMAINS OF NINE-FOOT GIANTS IN OHIO A correspondent of the Cincinnati Enquirer, writing about the remains of a giant race found in Muskingum County, Ohio, says: The mound in which these remarkable discoveries were made was about sixty-four feet long and thirty-five feet wide top measurement and gently sloped down to the hill where it was situated. A number of stumps of trees were found on the slope standing in two rows, and on the top of the mound were an oak and a hickory stump, all of which bo

I began thinking about the old tales of the Utah Lake Monster while traveling through the Salt Lake City area in May 2021 . Utah Lake and the Great Salt Lake to the north are both remnants of ancient Lake Bonneville. Lake Bonneville was formed roughly 32,000 years ago and lasted until about 14,000 years ago. According to Wikipedia: Lake Bonneville was the largest Late Pleistocene paleolake in the Great Basin of western North America. The Western Interior Seaway preceded Lake Bonneville. Lake Bonneville was a pluvial lake that formed in response to an increase in precipitation and a decrease in evaporation as a result of cooler temperatures. Lake Bonneville covered much of what is now western Utah and at its highest level extended into present-day Idaho and Nevada. Many other hydrographically closed basins in the Great Basin contained expanded lakes during the Late Pleistocene, including Lake Lahontan in northwestern Nevada. Utah Lake is shallow with the maximum depth of its waters on

Rumor has long held that a lost city lays in a cave in one of today’s most often visited national parks . On April 5, 1909, the Arizona Gazette ran a piece which told of the incredible discovery of a lost city in the Grand Canyon. This story is covered in depth in my book Detours Into The Paranormal: Canyon Country and is reprinted below in its entirety: EXPLORATIONS IN GRAND CANYON Mysteries of Immense Rich Cavern Being Brought to Light JORDAN IS ENTHUSED Remarkable Finds Indicate Ancient People Migrated From Orient The latest news of the progress of the explorations of what is now regarded by scientists as not only the oldest archeological discovery in the United States, but one of the most valuable in the world, which was mentioned some time ago in the Gazette, was brought to the city yesterday by G.E. Kinkaid, the explorer who found the great underground citadel of the Grand Canyon during a trip from Green River, Wyoming, down the Colorado, in a wooden boat, to