Author Denver Michaels

In his 1896 book Myths and Legends of Our Own Land, Charles M. Skinner recorded a number of strange tales from across the nation. One of those stories came to mind while I was camped at the Buffalo Gap National Grassland in South Dakota. As the sun set, I admired the badlands landscape, and thought of Skinner's story titled “The Banshee of the Bad Lands.” The story tells of a ghostly woman that haunts a butte in the badlands and she is sometimes accompanied by a skeleton that enjoys music. I have reprinted the classic story of the Badlands Banshee in its entirety below: ""Hell, with the fires out,” is what the Bad Lands of Dakota have been called. The fearless Western nomenclature fits the place. It is an ancient sea-bottom, with its clay strata worn by frost and flood into forms like pagodas, pyramids, and terraced cities. Labyrinthine canons wind among these fantastic peaks, which are brilliant in color, but bleak, savage, and oppressive. Game courses over the cast

The audio version of my latest travel book just went live. My buddy  @uncleperry  narrated the book and did an excellent job, I know you'll be impressed with his work. You can find the audio version of Detours Into the Paranormal: Big Bend on Amazon by clicking here. Or go directly to Audible. If you want a free promo code, go to the contact area of this site and send me an email. This is a description of the book from Amazon: Did ancient astronauts visit Big Bend? Are the Chisos Mountains haunted by the spirits of a vanished and forgotten people? Is Bigfoot lurking in the shadows of the Davis Mountains? What are the Marfa Mystery Lights? Is a pterosaur hiding in a cave in Mexico? Is a six-foot-tall bipedal lizard roaming the Chihuahuan Desert? Were Zoroastrians—practitioners of an ancient Iranian religion—living in West Texas more than 1,000 years before Christopher Columbus set sail? In this installment of his Detours Into the Paranormal series, author Denver Michaels heads

A lady contacted me a few years ago and shared her skunk ape sighting with me. The encounter occurred in 2014 in a county park in Florida. The following is her account with some personal information edited out: "I'm rather nervous to do this. I never thought I'd tell anyone but one close friend... "...I often sought the solitude of the local wildlife park to unwind. My favorite walk was to a bivouac camp. It's only marked number three on their maps. "My son had camped there before and had warned me that wild boar frequented the area. He'd claimed to have found a wallow on his last trip out. When I reached the campsite I knew I made a bad mistake. I could smell the boar. It was horrendous. Then something moved in the palmettos ahead of me. And it stood up. And up. Now mind you this is like 1 pm. Not dark out. No rain clouds. "I am bad at estimating distance so bear with me. I was driving a Grand Marquis. This thing was about three car l

The Ahuizotl is the legendary water monster of Aztec folklore once thought to live in lakes and rivers around Tenochtitlan, Mexico. Its name means “thorny one of the water” or “spiny aquatic thing.” The Aztecs had many legends of the Ahuizotl. The Florentine Codex, a manuscript compiled in the 16 th century describing aspects of life before the arrival of the Spanish mentions the creature. Descriptions This strange beast is similar in appearance to a small dog with monkey-like hands. The most unique feature of the animal is a long, slender tail with a human-like hand of the end. Using its unusual tail, the beast would snag its prey—humans—and drag them to a watery demise. The Ahuizotl feasted upon its victims; it was particularly fond of eating the eyeballs, teeth, and fingernails of its human prey. Several days after becoming a fatality of the water beast, the victim’s corpse would wash ashore with missing nails, teeth, and eyeballs. Some have described the Ahuizotl as some sort of

There is a Bigfoot variant native to northwestern New Jersey  called "Big Red Eye"; Big Red Eye takes its name, obviously, from its red eyes—glowing red eyes. An eyewitness from 1991 had this to say about their Big Red Eye encounter: I knew it wasn’t a bear, it was too lean and upright; it was humanoid. It had been there the whole time, watching our approach. There was no noise, otherwise we would have heard something big crashing through all the underbrush. It was tall and shaggy with red eyes. The eyes were glowing red from reflected light, not glowing like LED lights. It just stood there motionless, arms hanging limply at its sides. It didn’t seem to have any bad intentions, it was just creepy. Then of course, we ran and did not look back. I don’t care what anybody says, I know what I saw. That is something you don’t forget, I definitely did not go back to that spot anytime soon. 1 Big Red Eye, as we know it today, seems to have gotten its start in the 1970s along New Je