Author Denver Michaels

In 1935, when the Great Depression was ravaging the country, the federal government formed the Works Progress Administration (later named the Work Project Administration) to combat the devastating effects of the depression on the nation. The largest and most successful project was the Tennessee Valley Authority, which, through the construction of hydroelectric dams, modernized the region and created desperately needed jobs. One of the administration’s lesser-known projects was the Federal Writers Project. This project employed thousands of out-of-work teachers, researchers, librarians and historians who went about recording American oral histories and folklore. One of the better-known works of the Federal Writers Projects is Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States , which was compiled from over two thousand interviews with formerly enslaved people. Field workers employed by the federally subsidized Virginia Writers Project captured all manner of Virginia folkl...

The oldest house in Winchester, Virginia is known as "Abram's Delight." The history of the home goes back to the 1730s days when Abraham Hollingsworth received a land grant consisting of 582 acres in present-day Winchester . His land was a “delight to behold,” and he built a log cabin alongside a natural spring. Hollingsworth died in 1748, and his wife passed away a year later. His second son, Isaac, inherited the property, which would stay in the Hollingsworth family for two hundred years. Isaac built a stone house that served as the first quaker meeting place in the area, and it holds the distinction of being the oldest house in Winchester. Old homes and hauntings go together like peanut butter and chocolate, so, of course, Abram’s Delight has its share of ghost stories. Abram’s Delight underwent restoration in the 1950s. During this time, workers began seeing a tall man, over six feet in height, dressed in quaker’s clothing, walking in an out of the house. Marguerite ...

In my book Water Monsters South of the Border , I devoted a chapter to "water tigers," strange, aggressive large feline-like creatures that hide in the waters of South America and ambush prey—sometimes human prey. The following excerpt discusses the Maipolina, a water tiger in French Guiana: French Guiana, located on the northern end of the South American continent, bounded by the Atlantic Ocean, Suriname, and Brazil, is home to a creature known as the Maipolina. The animal is said to haunt the Maroni River, where it patiently waits underwater for its prey. The Maipolina, also known as Popoké and the “water mother,” reaches a size of nearly ten feet , has walrus-like tusks, droopy ears, powerful claws, and a white stripe running along its back. The fierce creature lives in caves in the riverbank, and attacks humans and canoes when the opportunity presents itself. 3 In one of the most often cited reports, the Maipolina was blamed for the grisly death of a child. This occurred ...

One of my all-time favorite authors is Louis L’Amour (1908–1988). L'Amour is best known for his western novels. He was born in North Dakota, and his father settled there before it became a state. Surely L’Amour’s Dakota upbringing shaped him and gave him a solid background for his writing. Over the course of his life, he authored over 250 short stories and 100 novels. By 2010, L’Amour’s works had sold in excess of 320 million copies! That is a metric fuck ton of sales, believe me. I will do somersaults and throw ninja spin kicks into the air while singing “We Are the Champions” when I hit one thousandth of that sales number. Seriously, I will. President Ronald Reagan signed legislation in 1982 awarding L’Amour the Congressional Gold Medal. Reagan said that L’Amour had “brought the West to the people of the East and to people everywhere.” Indeed. Since my late teenage years, L’Amour’s stories had me daydreaming of the West. Had I not read the books The Daybreakers , Conagher , Lonel...

In 1971, an unusual creature was spotted in a lagoon outside of Havana, Cuba. The lagoon, a flooded quarry, is located in San Miguel del Padrón, a suburb of Havana. Rumors of a frightening creature quickly spread throughout Havana; crowds of curious onlookers flocked to the lagoon. As news of the monster spread, the masses grew—crowds that once were in the hundreds, quickly escalated to thousands in number. The creature created such a buzz within the community, that the government-ran radio station, Radio Progresso, took an interest and sent reporters to investigate. The correspondents descended upon the scene; they examined eyewitness reports and interviewed witnesses. Descriptions of the creature vary; some described it as spindle-shaped, with large and threatening yellow eyes; others claimed to see a horned, hippopotamus-like animal with a featureless face. According to one witness who claimed to have seen the animal on multiple occasions: “It doesn’t look like anything but a black...

In 1957, Billings, Montana journalist Kathryn Wright broke the story of Custer’s missing payroll. According to the story, about a month before the ill-fated Battle of Little Bighorn, the army paid out $25,000 to the men of Custer’s Seventh Cavalry. This was the equivalent to four months of back pay. The army paid the troops while they were out in the field, far away from any town, to deter potential deserters and to avoid having to round up men who had went into town and had too much to drink. Paying soldiers in this manner was standard practice in the day. So, essentially, the U.S. soldiers who fought at the Battle of Little Bighorn had a total of about $25,000 on them. Little Big Horn The army suffered a crushing defeat at the Battle of Little Bighorn. According to Wikipedia: The 7th Cavalry suffered 52 percent casualties: 16 officers and 242 troopers killed or died of wounds, 1 officer and 51 troopers wounded. Every soldier of the five companies with Custer was killed (except for s...

The story of “McChesney’s Ghost” is one of the best ghost stories in all the Shenandoah Valley. It began in Augusta County’s unincorporated community of Newport in 1825 in the home of Dr. John McChesney—a man of unquestioned honesty and integrity in his day. McChesney, his wife and four children were gathered for their evening dinner when one of his slaves, an eight-year-old girl named Maria, burst in from the kitchen. Maria was frightened to the core and said an old woman “with her head tied up chased her.” Unsurprisingly, McChesney ignored the girl’s story, attributing the tale to childhood imagination. For days after the event, Maria complained of being frightened, and shortly thereafter, “vollies of stones began to fall on the dwelling house, and continued to fall at intervals, in daytime and also at night.” Most of the rocks were fist-sized, but some were “too large to be thrown by a person of ordinary strength.” Even weirder, some of the stones were so hot they burned the grass ...

When I arrived in Moodus, Connecticut in early-May 2022, I was surprised when a friend texted me an article from the New England Historical Society. The piece was titled “The Mysterious Moodus Noises of Connecticut,” and recounted the history of strange, unexplained noises that occur around the village of Moodus. The Moodus Noises I read the article at once. I couldn't believe that I had stumbled upon a place renowned for strange activity. According to the article: The Wangunk Indians had told the colonists of the fearful noises that they tried to appease. In fact, the Indians called the land around Mt. Tom “Machemoodus,” meaning place of bad noises. The settlers shortened the name to Moodus, now a village in East Haddam. Once Puritans moved to the area in the early-1700s, they heard the noises, too. And they, too, attributed the sounds to a supernatural source. The superstitious Puritans believed God was angry with them for their sins. Meanwhile, the local Indians believed the...

Surely over the years, you have read tons of stupid " Florida Man " headlines. The tales of Florida Man's exploits are colorful to say the least. For me, when I think of dumb Florida Man stunts and stories, my mind goes straight to the tale of "Old Three Toes." Strange Tracks The story of Old Three Toes goes back to 1948, when Clearwater residents began spotting large three-toed tracks on the beaches. As time went on, the tracks showed up in neighboring communities. It did not take long for the fourteen-inch-long, eleven-inch-wide tracks to attract national attention. One of my favorite Fortean authors and investigators, Ivan T. Sanderson , traveled to Florida to investigate the mysterious tracks for the New York Herald Tribune. Sanderson spent two weeks interviewing witnesses and examining plaster casts of the tracks. Around this time, more three-toed tracks appeared about 100 miles to the north along the Suwanee River. While flying over the Suwanee, Sanderson ...

Numbers 13:33 says: "And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight."  When the Spanish explorers landed on the shores of the New World, they hoped to find immeasurable riches and vast amounts of gold. What they didn’t expect, however, was to meet real-life “Sons of Anak.” Hernando de Soto (circa 1500–1542) is best known for being the first European to cross the Mississippi River. In fact, de Soto died of a fever in a village on the banks of the Mississippi. While marching through present-day Alabama, de Soto and his men met a true “Son of Anak."  According to the account of the Spanish chronicler Garcilasso de la Vega, de Soto tarried in the town of Talisse for a week and a half during which time a powerful chief, Tuscaloosa, sent an ambassador to meet with him. The ambassador was Tuscaloosa’s own son—about 18 years of age—who much taller than any of the Spaniards or I...

The Ogden Standard-Examiner ran the following piece on October 4, 1935 telling of "wild men" roaming the forests of British Columbia: Reports Tell of Canadian Monster Men Settlers Fifty Miles From Vancouver Describe Hairy Giants VANCOUVER, B. C., -- (UP) -Sasquatch men, remnants of a lost race of "wild men" who inhabited the rock regions of British Columbia centuries ago, are reported roaming the province again. After an absence of several months from the district of Harrison Mills, 50 miles east of Vancouver, the long: weird, wolf-like howls of the "wild men" are being heard again and two of the hairy monsters were reported seen in the Morris Valley on the Harrison River. Residents in the district tell of seeing the two giants leaping and bounding out of the forest and striding across the duck-feeding ground, wallowing now and again in the bog and mire and long, waving swamp grasses. REPORTED AGILE The strange men, it was reported, after emerging from the...

While trekking through the Amazonian rainforest Theodore Roosevelt learned of a supposed man-eating catfish lurking in the rivers. In his book Through the Brazilian Wilderness , Roosevelt wrote that several Amerindians in his party had caught a catfish over three and a half feet long. When they cleaned the fish, its stomach contents contained a monkey. Roosevelt and the other Americans in the group were shocked that something as large as a monkey could fall prey to a fish. The locals told him that fish much bigger dwell in the lower Madeira; these fish occasionally snatched unsuspecting humans. The following passage can be found in his book: " We Americans were astounded at the idea of a catfish making prey of a monkey; but our Brazilian friends told us that in the lower Madeira and the part of the Amazon near its mouth there is a still more gigantic catfish which in similar fashion occasionally makes prey of man. This is a grayish-white fish over nine feet long, with the usual di...

In 1896, a strange carcass washed ashore near St. Augustine, Florida . Two boys discovered the St. Augustine Monster and reported their find to Dr. DeWitt Webb, a local physician and founder of the St. Augustine Historical Society and Institute of Science. Webb examined the carcass on December 1 and in his estimation, it weighed at least five tons. He believed a giant octopus had washed ashore. The mysterious carcass became an area attraction and garnered the attention of news outlets. The New York Herald ran the following piece on January 3, 1897: Its head was nearly destroyed, and only the stumps of two arms were visible ... The body, as it lies somewhat imbedded in the sand, is 18 feet long and about 7 feet wide, while it rises 3 1⁄2 feet above the sand ... The weight of the body and head would have been at least four or five tons. If the eight arms held the proportions usually seen in smaller species of the octopus, they would have been at least 75 to 100 feet in length and about ...

A reader contacted me several years ago. He had just finished my book  Water Monsters South of the Border .   The book inspired him to share a story with me about "El Mohan"—a creature of Columbian folklore.  His story reminded me a lot of those great campfire tales and ghost stories so often recounted among friends. I thought I would share it with you, but first, here is a little background on El Mohan: Although his description does vary from place to place, he is usually a huge creature, covered in hair with long, claw-like nails. He sometimes has red eyes and gold teeth and is fond of mischief. Fisherman say el mohán  capsizes boats and steals bait and hooks. Washerwomen claim he bewitches girls with music and tricks. He is also said to guard ancient treasures in his underground palace and his appearance heralds the arrival of floods, earthquakes and plagues. Click Here for full article from Columbia.co This is the El Mohan story sent by the reader:...

Throughout the American Southwest there are dozens of tales of lost mines and caches of hidden treasure. For hundreds of years, the tales have infected many with gold fever. The stories have lured countless treasure hunters to their doom, while financial ruining an endless line of investors. Modern-day treasure seekers are still combing the mountains and desert landscape of the Southwest hoping to hit it big. There are rumors of a lost mine in El Paso, tucked away in the Franklin Mountains. Known as the Lost Padre Mine, this story has lured many into the Franklins searching for a cache hidden by monks in the 1600s. According to the story, priests from the mission of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe (our lady of Guadalupe), across the Rio Grande in Juárez, worked a mine in the Franklin Mountains. The industrious monks extracted both gold and silver ore from the mine and they smelted the raw material into bars. The Pueblo Revolt of 1680 forced the F...