Recently, I’ve been enjoying a series of books sent to me that feature the artwork and, namely, the extensive research of my friend Wm Michael Mott. The particular titles I’ve been plowing through include Caverns Cauldrons and Concealed Creatures and This Tragic Earth: The Art and World of Richard Sharpe Shaver, as well as two of Mike’s fiction offerings, Pulp Winds: Pulse Pounding Adventures in Fiction and Verse and The Pulsifer Saga: Omnibus Edition, all of which are available for sale at Mike’s Website.
Mike’s imagination and intellect extend beyond just the realms of scholarly research, and the mysteries of this world only seem to have provoked musings in his own mind that have resulted in the fanciful tales he spins in the latter of these four books. However, I first came to know Mike as a researcher of Hollow Earth mysteries–namely the stories told by Richard Shaver and later published by editor Ray Palmer in Amazing Stories in the 1940s and ’50s–which dealt with a race of beings that exist in hollow caverns under the Earth. This represents a sort of folkloric element that taps in to devils, demons, and a host of anti-humans that dwell in dark recesses of this planet where minds have wandered (if not also the occasional explorer) for centuries in search of their greatest fears. Read the rest of this entry »
During an evening flight in June of 1954, Captain James Howard was en route from New York to London piloting a BOAC Stratocruiser when something remarkable—and frightening—occurred. According to the testimony of he and his flight crew, an amorphous, black “jellyfish-shaped” object appeared on the horizon (similar to the Danish “Flying Gople” pictured, right), remaining visible at a distance above the Labrador coast. Several dark “blob-like objects” accompanied what Howard called a “mothership.” “I think there’s no question that it was no illusion,” he stated in an interview shortly after the encounter, “and that it was being intelligently handled.” Fighter aircraft were sent to investigate shortly after the sighting, and as they approached, the smaller UFOs were absorbed by the larger object, which then suddenly disappeared.
As the “media blitz” involving radio and other appearances in support of my new book, 
I received word from my friend Nick Redfern this morning regarding a new film that his friends at Red Star Films have released, detailing a trip he made a few years ago to Puerto Rico, the “Isle of Enchantment,” in search of its most famous diminutive blood-sucking resident: the Chupacabra. Here’s what Nick has to say: