Author Denver Michaels

I spent a weekend in Calvert County, Maryland recently. I have been there many times and find it to be a fascinating area. I am especially drawn to the Calvert Cliffs which hold vast deposits of fossilized fauna from the Miocene epoch (about 23–5 million years ago). Well, that and Chessie, the Chesapeake Bay Monster. But more on Chessie later. Let's talk fossils first.  Calvert Cliffs Fossils According to the website fossilguy.com: The fossil bearing Calvert Cliffs of Maryland is part of a large collection of fossiliferous exposures, called the Chesapeake Group. The Chesapeake Group encompasses exposures around the Chesapeake Bay, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia. These exposures were created by sediment accumulation in the Salisbury Embayment, an area encompassing the Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia coastal plains which is often covered by the ocean (Kent, 1994, p.111).  The Calvert Cliffs run for roughly 24 miles from near Chesapeake Beach to Drum Point on the western ...

Few who visit the vacation hub of Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, realize that there is an old Indian mound alongside the busy highway. The mound , known as the McMahan Mound, gets lost among the sprawling strip malls and hotels. The McMahan Mound sits on the bank of the west fork of the Little Pigeon River in downtown Sevierville, Tennessee. In my travels to various mound sites throughout the country, one commonality is that mounds are always situated near a good water source. This was a necessity so that the builders could wet the earth and firmly pack it down. According to a Wikipedia entry, the McMahan Indian Mound: …consists of a 16 feet (5 m) high and 240 feet (73 m) wide platform mound, with a large associated village surrounded by a palisade. It was occupied by Dallas Phase peoples of the South Appalachian Mississippian culture between 1200 and 1500 CE. At the time when the ancient mound was first investigated scientifically in 1881 by a party associated with the Smithsonian Instit...

From the earliest days of European exploration in South America, reports of strange, dinosaur-like creatures have emerged. One of the most intriguing reports of dinosaurs in South America comes from Bolivia. The following account was published in the  Scientific American  in 1883. The article is titled, “A Bolivian Saurian,” and some think it lends credence to the idea of living dinosaurs . The Brazilian Minister at La Paz, Bolivia, has remitted to the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Rio photographs of drawings of an extraordinary saurian killed on the Beni after receiving thirty-six balls. By order of the President of Bolivia the dried body, which had been preserved in Asuncion, was sent to La Paz. It is twelve meters long from snout to point of the tail, which latter is flattened. Besides the anterior head, it has, four meters behind, two small but completely formed heads rising from the back. All three have much resemblance to the head of a dog. The legs are short, and...

Christopher Columbus gets the credit for discovering the New World, but it was another Italian, Amerigo Vespucci (1454–1512) that proved the Americas were a large and separate land mass—not the outer fringes of Asia. The Americas, as they came to be known, were named after Amerigo Vespucci. During Vespucci’s second voyage, he landed on an island that would become known as the Isla de los Gigantes, or Island of the Giants . Vespucci recorded the following in his letters: …We found that this other island was inhabited by very tall people . We landed to see whether there was any fresh water, and not thinking it was inhabited, as we had not seen anyone, we came upon very large footprints in the sand, as we were walking along the beach. We judged that if the other measurements were in proportion to those of their feet, they must be very tall. Going in search, we came into a road which led inland. There were nine of us. Judging that there could not be many inhabitants, as the island was sma...

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 ...

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...

When wading through the historical accounts from the early days of the United States of the recovery of giant skeletons from burial mounds , especially those considered to be of Adena construction, a recurring theme presents itself—strange tablets inscribed with hieroglyphs were often found among the remains of the dead. This curious phenomenon opens up a Pandora’s box of questions about the ancient Mound Builders! In Fauquier County, Virginia, two giant skeletons were unearthed from a mound in 1866. The excavators also recovered typical artifacts such as spearheads; however, a tablet containing “hieroglyphics of a very curious character” was also present. 1 Mounds that held the remains of eleven-foot-tall men were opened in Michigan. One of the tombs contained a strange tablet inscribed with “curious characters.” The  St. Joseph Weekly  reported on the event in their September 21, 1847 issue: A Carson City, Mich., correspondent of the Detroit News writes that the remains of...

I read a fascinating newspaper article that appeared in the San Francisco Call in their March 8, 1908, issue about giants in Hawaii. H. Coffin Berry wrote the piece which was titled, “When Hawaii was Peopled by Giants .” The article read like an adventure book, comic book, or an old dime store novel, and it reminded me a lot of the old pulp science fiction magazines Fate Magazine and Amazing Stories . To summarize the important aspects of the article, it began by speaking of catacombs in Europe, but pointed out that unbeknown to most people, Hawaii is home to a series of catacombs that are much older than those found in Rome. The piece also gave an account of an expedition into the Hawaiian catacombs. According to Berry, the Hawaiian catacombs, which weave their way through the volcanic rock that forms the islands, represent a “sealed storehouse of vast information awaiting scientific inspection and research.” Berry’s article discussed giants in Hawaii—large human remains were disco...

One of the most intriguing legends from ancient America is that of the "moon-eyed people." The legend takes us to West Virginia. Most of present-day West Virginia was void of permanent Native American settlements when European colonists began their westward push. Why? The area is rich in game and other resources; why not live there? Legend holds that in 1773, at the behest of Virginia Governor Lord Dunmore , Thomas Bullit travelled to present-day southwestern Ohio to seek permission from the Shawnee to establish settlements in the Can-tuc-kee lands (which included large portions of modern-day West Virginia). Shawnee chief Black Fish was unable to grant permission; he did not feel it was his to give, the land belonged to the ghosts of the Azgen, a tribe of moon-eyed people who were murdered by the ancestors of the Shawnee. Because of the ghosts, the Shawnee refused to settle on the land and only used it—respectfully—as hunting grounds. Who were these moon-eyed people? Accordin...

I have long been fascinated with the Marfa Lights. Really, that fascination goes beyond the Marfa Lights and includes any example of “mystery lights”—strange lights that appear and move in an erratic manner without a known cause.  Most think atmospheric conditions cause these weird mystery lights to appear in the night sky. But truthfully, no one knows how or why this occurs. The mystery light phenomenon is truly an enigma. One of the most well-known manifestations of mystery lights or “ghost lights” takes place at Brown Mountain in North Carolina’s Pisgah National Forest. I have visited a couple of times and the lights did not disappoint. Lights appeared and disappeared on the mountain, often looking like twinkling stars. The lights sometimes changed colors to a yellow, orange or red and they would float or sometimes quickly dart from side to side. Another famous example of mystery lights is the aforementioned Marfa Lights. These lights appear in the desert outside the west Texas ...

An intriguing report of the discovery of giant mummies in Death Valley appeared in newspapers across the nation on August 5, 1947. The article titled "Trace of Giants Found in Desert" is reprinted below: TRACE OF GIANTS FOUND IN DESERT LOS ANGELES, Aug 4. (AP)-- A retired Ohio doctor has discovered relics of an ancient civilization, whose men were 8 or 9 feet tall in the Colorado desert near the Arizona-Nevada-California line, an associate said today. Howard E. Hill. of Los Angeles speaking before the Transportation Club, disclosed that several well-preserved mummies were taken yesterday from caverns in an area roughly 180 miles square, extending through much of southern Nevada from Death Valley, Calif. across the Colorado River into Arizona. Hill said the discoverer is Dr. F. Bruce Russell, retired Cincinnati physician, who stumbled on the first of several tunnels in 1931, soon after coming West and deciding to try mining for his health. MUMMIES FOUND Not until this year, ...

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, an...