Author Denver Michaels

The following is an excerpt from my book Giants: Men of Renown , published by Adventures Unlimited Press in which I discuss the giants in the Book of Moses:

Looking at the title of this blog post—Pig Lady—if you're old enough to remember Seinfeld , you might hear in your mind Kramer shout:  "It was a pigman, Jerry! Half man, half pig!" The Pig Lady, from Cecil County, Maryland, however, is no joke. She is not a "fat little mental patient" as Kramer's pigman turned out to be. In my book Detours Into the Paranormal: Atlantic City Road Trip , I discussed the legend. The following is an excerpt: ...According to the tale of the Pig Lady, she was horribly disfigured in a house fire. She escaped the burning structure with her life but suffered awful burns in the process. A nearby person came to help, but when he laid eyes on her, he became so frightened by her burnt, disfigured face that he took off running. The poor woman who had just lost her home had now lost her face—she was a freak, an outcast; she fled into the woods and became the Pig Lady. As with a lot of these urban legends , there are several variations of ...

In 1885, the American Antiquarian ran an article discussing a mound which had been opened in Pennsylvania. The mound yielded several interesting finds, chief among them the large skeleton of a Pennsylvania giant who wore a copper crown: " A large Indian mound near the town of Gasterville, Pa., has recently been opened and examined by a committee of scientists sent out from the Smithsonian Institute. At some depth from the surface a kind of vault was found in which was discovered the skeleton of a giant measuring seven feet two inches. His hair was course and jet-black, and hung to the waist, the brow being ornamented with a copper crown. The skeleton was remarkably well preserved. Near it were also found the bodies of several children of various sizes, the remains being covered with beads made of bone of some kind. Upon removing these, the bodies were seen to be enclosed in a network of straw or reeds, and beneath this was a covering of the skin of some animal. On the stones whi...

Many in the cryptozoology community credit Theodore Roosevelt with recording an early Bigfoot encounter in his 1893 book The Wilderness Hunter .  Teddy Roosevelt's Bigfoot story began with him saying that frontiersmen, as a rule, were not superstitious. They lived hard and austere lives and had “little imagination in things spiritual and supernatural.” That said, Roosevelt did hear a “goblin story” that impressed him. I have reprinted Teddy Roosevelt's Bigfoot story, taken from his book, below:

On December 17, 1891, Nature ran an interesting piece about the discovery of an enormous skeleton clad in copper armor in a mound in Ohio. The following article describes the Ohio giant: "According to the “World's Fair Notes,” sent to us from Chicago, the party which, under the direction of Mr. Putnam, has been making excavations in the mounds of Ohio, made an important discovery on November 14. While at work on a mound 500 feet long, 200 feet wide, and 28 feet high, the excavators found near the centre of the mound, at a depth of 14 feet, the massive skeleton of a man incased in copper armour. The head was covered by an oval-shaped copper cap; the jaws had copper mouldings; the arms were dressed in copper, while copper plates covered the chest and stomach, and on each side of the head, on protruding sticks, were wooden antlers ornamented with copper. The mouth was stuffed with genuine pearls of immense size, but much decayed. Around the neck was a necklace of bears’ teeth, s...

I have often wondered if the Bible mentions a long-necked dinosaur in the Book of Job. Verses 15–24 of chapter 40 speak of an enormous herbivore called “behemoth” that is the “chief of the ways of God.” Is this massive creature a dinosaur? I think it could be. 15 Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eateth grass as an ox. 16 Lo now, his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the navel of his belly. 17 He moveth his tail like a cedar: the sinews of his stones are wrapped together. 18 His bones are as strong pieces of brass; his bones are like bars of iron. 19 He is the chief of the ways of God: he that made him can make his sword to approach unto him. 20 Surely the mountains bring him forth food, where all the beasts of the field play. 21 He lieth under the shady trees, in the covert of the reed, and fens. 22 The shady trees cover him with their shadow; the willows of the brook compass him about. 23 Behold, he drinketh up a river, and hasteth not: he trusteth that h...

George Bird Grinnell (1849–1938) spent decades recording the histories, legends, and cultural practices of the Plains Indians. According to a Pawnee narrative recounted to Grinnell, the first people to inhabit the earth were giants. These mighty men of old were so powerful that they hunted buffalo on foot. The giant buffalo hunters ran fast enough to catch buffalo and were strong enough to kill them with only clubs and flint knives. So powerful were these giants, and of such enormous stature, that they carried slain buffalo upon their shoulders. These giant buffalo hunters of the Plains were also arrogant and haughty, and they refused to honor their creator, Tirawa. The giants believed themselves to be invincible; as time went on, they grew in their arrogance and their behavior became completely unacceptable to their creator.  Like so many other deities spanning a myriad of unrelated cultures, Tirawa also decided to rid the earth of the arrogant giant buffalo hunters. He turned th...

Books about Bigfoot are a dime a dozen. I certainly have read my share over the years and I have a stack in my "to read" pile. Some Bigfoot books are great, some are terrible, and then there are plenty of so-so books. Having read a couple that fall into the mediocre category recently, I decided to reread a classic. So, I downloaded an e-book version of Ivan Sanderson’s Abominable Snowmen, Legend Come to Life. While reading the other night, something Sanderson wrote grabbed my attention—the idea that Bigfoot creatures are more human than animal. ABSMs In his book, Sanderson lumped Bigfoot into an overarching category called Abominable Snowmen or ABSM for short. Everyone knows ABSMs are elusive. Sanderson hinted at why: It is simply that ABSMs are Hominids or, just as every benighted native has always asserted, human rather than animal, and thus are endowed in one degree or another with human attributes, and most notably their powers of survival, their adaptability, their to...

Virginia was arguably the most important Confederate state. It was the most populous with over 1.5 million residents. Virginia was also the wealthiest state, thanks in large part to its industrial base. Virginia was the industrial hub of the Confederacy and it equaled the output of all other Confederate states combined. Being the northernmost Confederate state, and a state of such importance to the South’s war effort, the majority of the Civil War was fought on Virginia soil. The Civil War Sites Advisory Commission classified 384 Civil War engagements as “principal battles.” Of those battles, 123 occurred in Virginia. Tennessee comes in a distant second with 38 principal battles. Some of the most fierce fighting in Virginia occurred in the Shenandoah Valley. For this reason, the valley attracts history buffs from far and wide who visit the battlefields scattered throughout the region. The Breadbasket of the Confederacy Favorable growing conditions made the Shenandoah Valley vital to th...

In my RV travels across the nation, I’ve spent a fair amount of time on the shores of Lake Erie. Lake Erie is the twelfth largest lake on Earth and the primary source of drinking water for over 11 million people. The lake spans almost 10,000 square miles and holds six quadrillion gallons of water. For someone like me that has an interest in the weird and unexplained, some of the towns along Lake Erie are perfect for a visit. There are ancient burial mounds and tales of giants, lake monsters, haunted buildings , Bigfoot sightings and more. Monroe Monster In early autumn 2021, I stayed in a Michigan state park on the outskirts of the town of Monroe. Immediately, I began thinking of the “Monroe Monster.” The Monroe Monster made a name for itself in the summer of 1965 after locals began spotting the creature. The monster made headlines nationwide after it attacked a teenage girl named Christine Van Acker while she sat in a car with her mother. According to a report in the Independent (Lon...

The pages of the Bible speak of entire races of giants. Among them, are the Anakims, the Rephaims, the Emims, the Zamzummims, and the Amorites. Who were these large-statured folks? The Reverend Finis Jennings Dake (1902–1987), who penned the Dake Annotated Reference Bible , the first widely-distributed study bible from a Pentecostal perspective, said this about giants in his work: The Anakims were a great and tall people (Deut. 1:28; Deut. 2:10-11,21; Deut. 9:2; Joshua 11:21-22; Joshua 14:12-14). Anak himself was a giant (Numbers 13:33). If all Anakims were as big, we can be assured other giants were also. The land of Ammon was “a land of giants,” for “giants dwelt therein in old time” (Deut. 2:19-20). The Emims were also “great, and many, and tall, as the Anakims” (Deut. 2:10-11). The same was said of the Zamzummims who formerly inhabited the land of Ammon (Deut. 2:19-21). Rephaims Dake said the following concerning the Rephaims: A “valley of the giants” is mentioned in Joshua 15:8...

The Evening Herald , a newspaper from Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, reported an encounter in which a lake monster  attacked a boat with four men inside in their June 22, 1893, issue. The incident occurred in Cedar Bass Lake outside of Knox, Indiana. The article is titled "Lake Monster Smashes Boat, Men Thrown Overboard" and is reprinted below:

There is a gravity hill, called "Spook Hill" just outside of Burkittsville, Maryland. If the name sounds familiar, you might remember it from the 1999 cult-classic, The Blair Witch Project . Unfortunately for Blair Witch enthusiasts, most of the movie was filmed about 25 miles away and the recognizable landmarks in the movie are not located in town or the area nearby. Local legend holds that the spirits of disembodied Confederate soldiers haunt the area. It is these spirits—thinking they are pushing artillery uphill into position—that will push your car up the gravity hill. For this to take place: bring your car to a complete stop at the bottom of the hill; put the vehicle in neutral; your car will then begin to move uphill and gain speed the further up the hill you go. I have personally reached speeds of 7–10 miles per hour.  As a side note, be very careful if you are in the area and attempt this. For a two-lane country road, there is more traffic than you might expect. O...

There have long been wild rumors of a powerful, advanced underworld kingdom. Much of the literature on the topic indicates this mysterious civilization is headquartered somewhere beneath central Asia led by the "King of the World." A leading proponent of this idea was Dr. Ferdinand Ossendowski, a Polish explorer who wrote of this kingdom—dubbing it the “Mystery of Mysteries”—in his 1923 book  Beasts, Men and Gods.   He wrote: On my journey into Central Asia I came to know for the first time about “the Mystery of Mysteries,” which I can call by no other name…The old people on the shore of the River Amyl related to me an ancient legend to the effect that a certain Mongolian tribe in their escape from the demands of Jenghiz Khan hid themselves in a subterranean country. Afterwards a Soyot from near the Lake of Nogan Kul showed me the smoking gate that serves as the entrance to the “Kingdom of Agharti.” Through this gate a hunter formerly entered into the Kingdom and, after his...

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 ...