About the Author

Denver Michaels is an author with a passion for cryptozoology, the paranormal, lost civilizations and ancient history, and all things unexplained. In 2016, the Virginia native released his first book, People Are Seeing Something, which makes a case for the existence of lake monsters in the United States and Canada. Since then, he has gone on to author Giants: Men of Renown, Strange Tales From Virginia’s Mountains, and many other books covering cryptozoology and paranormal subjects.

Denver Michaels and his wife sold their home in the spring of 2020 and now travel the country full-time in an RV. Michaels enjoys the outdoors, hiking, fishing, and investigating the unexplained.



My Most Popular Posts

The Giants of Ancient Tennessee

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John Haywood (1753-1826) was a historian known as the "father of Tennessee history." These days, he might be best known for documenting giant skeletons found in Tennessee, as well as popularizing the "Tennessee Pygmies." In Haywood's 1823 work, The Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee , he documented several unique discoveries. These include giant skeletons found in Tennessee, particularly in and around White County. Haywood devoted a section to the giant skeletons found in Tennessee in his book. The entire section (Chapter VIII, section 1) is printed below: First, then—Of their Size. This is ascertained by the length and dimensions of the skeletons which are found in East and West Tennessee. These will prove demonstratively, that the ancient inhabitants of this country, either the primitive or secondary settlers, were of gigantic stature , compared with the present races of Indians.  On the farm of Mr. John Miller, of White county, are a numbe...
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Giant Bones in West Virginia

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When the Bible famously declared that “there were giants on the earth in those days,” in Genesis 6:4, the writer wasn’t kidding—especially when it comes to West Virginia. In the early days of our nation, people routinely unearthed giant bones in the Mountain State. Giant Bones Countless newspapers and county histories in the 1800s told the story of giant bones. Stories such as these were commonplace: “It is said that a jawbone was plowed up near Moorefield which would pass over the outside of a common man's lower jaw; that it contained eight jaw teeth on either side, and that they sat transversely in their sockets. A bone of that size would have belonged to a man eight or nine feet high… Another jawbone of enormous size is recorded as having been discovered near Martinsburg.” Hu Maxwell and H. L. Swisher,  History of Hampshire County West Virginia from Its Earliest Settlement to the Present  (Morgantown, WV: A. Brown Boughner, 1897) “While digging a grave on Trace Fork, Lin...
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The Wa-gas

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In her book To the American Indian, Lucy Thompson (1856–1932), a member of the Yurok tribe whose Yurok name was Che-na-wah Weitch-ah-wah, recorded many of the tales of her people. One of the most interesting stories in the book is that of the Wa-gas. According to Thompson, the Wa-gas were an ancient race of white people that lived in North America many thousands of years ago. However, these folks were much different than Europeans who colonized the Americas in recent times. The following excerpt comes from Thompson’s book in a section titled “ Traditions of the Ancient White People” :
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The Giants from the West

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The ethnologist James Mooney (1861–1921) wrote of ancient giants in his 1902 book, Myths of the Cherokee . The section titled "The Giants from the West" is an intriguing account. I have reprinted it below: THE GIANTS FROM THE WEST James Wafford, of the western Cherokee, who was born in Georgia in 1806, says that his grandmother, who must have been born about the middle of the last century, told him that she had heard from the old people that long before her time a party of giants had come once to visit the Cherokee. They were nearly twice as tall as common men, and had their eyes set slanting in their heads, so that the Cherokee called them Tsunil' kalu', "The Slant-eyed people," because they looked like the giant hunter Tsul'kalu' (see the story). They said that these giants lived very far away in the direction in which the sun goes down. The Cherokee received them as friends, and they stayed some time, and then returned to their home in the we...
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A Large Turtle

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Large turtle tales are among my favorite types of cryptid encounters . Perhaps that is why I spent over a week on the outskirts of Roswell, New Mexico in 2022. I had hoped to catch a glimpse of the fabled large turtles the "size of a Volkswagen." (I did not.) Maybe the best turtle tale is the story of Oscar, the Beast of Busco. This enormous turtle, with a shell as big as "the top of a car" caused a ruckus in an Indiana town in 1949. In 1883, the Scientific American published a blurb about a large turtle—large is an understatement!—spotted at sea. I reprinted the entire text below: A Large Turtle "Captain Augustus G. Hall and the crew of the schooner Annie L. Hall vouch for the following: On March 30, while on the Grand Bank, in latitude 40° 10’, longitude 33°, they discovered an immense live trunk turtle, which was at first thought to be a Reptiles and Amphibians 535 vessel bottom up. The schooner passed within twenty-five feet of the monster, and those on bo...
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The Nahullo

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Horatio Bardwell “H.B.” Cushman (1822–1904) was the son of missionaries to the Choctaw nation. His parents, Calvin and Laura, left their home in Massachusetts in 1820 and moved to Mississippi to minister to the Choctaw people. Cushman, who was raised among the Choctaw, considered them to be his earliest and most faithful friends. Having grown up with the Choctaw, and having a great affinity for them, Cushman became acquainted with their history, legends, and customs. In 1899, he published History of the Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Natchez Indians; the book sheds much light on the traditions of the native inhabitants of the southeastern United States. In his work, Cushman wrote about the Nahullo giants of Choctaw legend. There is also a legend of mammoths and their extinction: An ancient Choctaw tradition attributes the origin of the prairies along the western banks of the Tombigbee River, to some huge animals (mammoths) that existed there at the advent of their ancestors from the west t...
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Lucy the Phantom Hitchhiker

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According to local legend, there is a phantom hitchhiker named Lucy along the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail just outside of Gatlinburg, Tennessee. This trail is a six-mile, one-way drive that cuts through a dense tree canopy. Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail is easily accessible from downtown Gatlinburg and lands you a world away from the busy streets in mere minutes. The trail follows Roaring Fork, a beautiful cold-water stream typical of those found in the Great Smoky Mountains. The white-water crashes against large boulders and there are small waterfalls and deep pools of frigid mountain water along the way. Mills, old structures, and historic homesites are scattered along the trail—a reminder that people used to live and work here. One of those old mountain folks that lived along the trail in the early 1900s was Lucy. As the story goes, Lucy was a young lady who died tragically when her family’s cabin burned down. Sometime after her death, a man named Foster (I don’t know if this ...
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Giants & Dwarves

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Giants and dwarves. An ancient odd couple. From fantasy novels to 1800s newspaper stories, the two go hand in hand. My fascination with stories of ancient giants introduced me to supposed tribes of little people in ancient America. Specifically, John Haywood’s Natural and Aboriginal History of Tennessee opened my eyes to the enigma. His book covers in depth both enormous and diminutive skeletal finds in Middle Tennessee. But what really stuck out to me in my years of research into the ancient giants that walked the earth are reports from North America of burial mounds that contained the remains of both giants and dwarves. Over the years I have read a number of accounts of mound excavations that yielded these strange discoveries. "Graves of Dwarves Found" A Massachusetts newspaper, the North Adams Transcript , ran a piece titled “Graves of Dwarves Found” on October 24, 1899: " Workmen terracing King hill, an old landmark of northwestern Missouri, which is to be convert...
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George Washington's Giant Skeletons

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During the height of the French and Indian War, a fort was built in the frontier town of Winchester, Virginia to protect the local citizenry from attack. Named Fort Loudoun, after the Governor General of Virginia and Commander-in-Chief John Campbell, the fourth Earl of Loudoun, construction began in 1756. The fort was designed by the commander of the Virginia Regiment, Colonel George Washington, who supervised its construction. During the excavation of the fort’s foundation, Washington’s men dug up a couple of large skeletons. According to Washington, they were seven feet long. Today, the property is owned by the French and Indian War Foundation and is listed in the National Registry of Historic Places. If you guessed that the George Washington giant skeletons are not housed in the museum on the property, then you are correct. What happened to them? My guess is that they were lost—possibly never even stored. A war was going on, and Washington and his men were not out to prove to t...
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Pensacola Sea Monster Attacks Teenage Boys

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On March 26, 1962, the Ocala Star-Banner ran an article about a Pensacola sea monster that attacked five teenage boys. The piece was titled “4 Teenage Skindivers Still Missing After Raft is Abandoned.” The text of the story is as follows: Four teenaged skindivers remained missing today after abandoning their tide-swept rubber raft in the Gulf of Mexico Saturday. A fifth youth swam two miles to shore about dark Saturday. The four were Bradford Rice, 14, Warren Felley, 16, Eric Ruyle, 16, and Larry Stuart Bill, 17. The fifth youth was Brian McCleary, 16 found sleeping on a beach near Fort McRae early Sunday. McCleary said he and the other four were skindiving in the gulf when the tide began carrying them to sea. Swells broke over their raft. He said they tried to move to a buoy but missed. Then, he said, they abandoned the raft to swim ashore. The raft washed ashore on Gulf Beach. Face masks, shoes, and fins were inside. McCleary said he, Bill and Ruyle developed cra...
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