The history of mankind is riddled with the weird and the wonderful; bizarre people, strange places and odd events. For centuries, we’ve told each other fantastic stories around campfires and in darkened rooms. Tales of ghosts, UFOs, and conspiracies, but are these stories exactly that: Stories? There’s only one way to find out! Join me as I dive down the rabbit hole and into… the Unexplained Files.
 
This week: Spontaneous Human Combustion

WTF?

Galway, Ireland. December 2010: Forensic experts enter the home of Michael Faherty to find a scene as baffling as it is macabre. Mr Faherty’s home had been the scene of a blaze; oddly, the blaze hadn’t spread beyond the confines of the living room. The 76 year-old was dead, lying on his back, with his head closest to an open fireplace. Thing is, the baffled experts had ruled that a fire in the fireplace had not been the cause of the fire. Aside from the floor beneath and ceiling above the body, there was no other damage to the room. On top of that, there was no trace of any accelerant, and there was nothing at the scene to lead investigators to believe that the badly burned body had fallen victim to foul play.
 
So had the victim just burst into flames?
 
According to the coroner, Dr Ciaran McLoughlin, yes.
 
You’re Kidding, Right?
 
I shit you not, dear reader. At that point in his career, Dr McLoughlin had been investigating deaths for over a quarter of a century; this was the first time he’d ruled someone victim to spontaneous combustion.
 
"This fire was thoroughly investigated and I'm left with the conclusion that this fits into the category of spontaneous human combustion, for which there is no adequate explanation," he said.
 
Hold Your Horses!
 
So at any given time folks can just burst into fucking flames?! Apparently, yep. This is far from the first case. In September 1967, a call was made to the emergency services: whilst walking to work, the good people of Lambeth, South London, had noticed a derelict house with an odd bright light burning inside. Shortly after the call was made, The Lambeth Fire Brigade arrived on the scene, and what Brigade Commander John Stacey saw left him shocked.
 
The source of the bright light was the burning body of Robert Bailey, a local alcoholic. He’d sheltered in the house overnight, and caught fucking fire the next morning. The house itself was untouched, only Bailey burned.
 
According to Stacey, Robert Bailey was found in the foetal position at the bottom of the stairs. In his stomach was a four inch slit and burning from it a cone of blue flame, similar to that of a blow-torch. There was no damage to neither the house, nor Bailey, apart from the area immediately surrounding the slit. The rest of his body and even his clothing was untouched. Thinking the poor bastard might actually still be alive, they emptied several fire extinguishers, eventually dousing the fire.
 
As horrible as all of that sounds, you haven’t heard the worst: Stacey said that the flame was coming from inside Robert Bailey; that the man was burning from the inside out. Such was Bailey’s agony, during the episode he’d bitten into the solid mahogany of one of the newel posts of the stairs. His dead body remained teeth locked into the wood. His jaw had to be prised open by the firemen.
 
Fuck that.
 
An investigation determined that no source of ignition could be found. In what might be one of the greatest understatements ever committed to record, Bailey’s death was put down to “unknown causes”.
 
Make Your Mind Up Time.
 
Is spontaneous combustion a thing?
 
One documentary hosted by Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson (because why the hell not?) tested a bunch of theories around some of the possible causes of this most bizarre of mysteries. One theory quickly dismissed on the show actually replicated the results of the sad tale of Robert Bailey. A mixture of gases created by the gut in very rare circumstances that ignited upon contact with oxygen. In other words. Flatulence. Death by farting.
 
This sounds like making light of the matter but the truth is, the sad stories of Robert Bailey and Michael Faherty are not so easily dismissed. Is there something more to this? I think so.
 
RATING: 1=Bollocks 2=Not convinced 3=Possibly… 4=Compelling stuff 5=Holyshittheskyisfalling
 
Further Reading: The article the death of Michael Faherty is available on the BBC website.

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The history of mankind is riddled with the weird and the wonderful; bizarre people, strange places and odd events. For centuries, we’ve told each other fantastic stories around campfires and in darkened rooms. Tales of ghosts, UFOs, and conspiracies, but are these stories exactly that: Stories? There’s only one way to find out! Join me as I dive down the rabbit hole and into… the Unexplained Files.
 
This week: The Loch Ness Monster

WTF?
 
Loch Ness, Scotland. 22nd July 1933. George Spicer and his wife are driving along the banks of the loch when a huge creature appeared from the bushes and dragged itself into the dark waters of the loch. The monster was the length of a bus with a long, slender neck similar to an elephant’s trunk. It was the first modern appearance of the beast that would become famous across the globe (yes, flat earthers, I said GLOBE) as the “Loch Ness Monster”. It was later revealed that the Spicers were ‘high as fuck’.
 
Only kidding. The Spicers were respectable folk.
 
You’re Kidding, Right?
 
A monster? In a loch? There have been many photos of the beast over the years. Blurry ones, inconclusive ones, and even fake ones. There are some videos too. For the most part, they fall into similar categories, with many sceptics commenting that the videos show seals, otters, detritus, or in some cases, absolutely nothing. There have been numerous searches of the loch, using more and more modern technology and techniques, all have which have given us… cock all. Nothing. Zilch. Zero.
 
Hold Your Horses!
 
So it’s all horseshit? Well, over the years there have been many witnesses, many respectable witnesses. Lab technicians, police officers and whatnot. They can’t all be lying, can they? Maybe not.
 
The first report of something beastly dwelling in Loch Ness actually dates back to 565 when St. Columba (an Irish monk) met a bunch of locals burying a man by the River Ness. They said he was swimming when he was attacked by what they called a “water beast”, which is what I might say if someone caught me disposing of the body of a guy I’d killed. According to the men, the dead guy was mauled and dragged beneath the surface by the aforementioned water beast. They attempted a boat rescue, but alas, were too late.
 
Make Your Mind Up Time.
 
I’m remiss to disregard a lot of eyewitness testimony, but despite being one of the largest bodies of water in Britain (22sq miles in surface area, 56km2 for fans of metric), it’s a loch, not an ocean. It’s a finite area. Granted, it’s fucking deep (~800ft/230m), which would theoretically give Nessie plenty of hiding space, but for almost a century of searching, all we have to show is inconclusive videos and blurry pictures.
 
The biggest cluster of sightings was in the 30s when technology wasn’t great, but nowadays we’ve got cameras in our pockets. And this isn’t like trying to take a picture of something moving across a dark sky. If anyone sees anything, it’s in the daytime; there should be more (and better quality) photos of the Loch Ness Monster. But there aren’t.
 
Is there something lurking in the murky depths of Loch Ness? I hope I’m wrong, but I’m yet to see anything to convince me.
 
RATING: 1=Bollocks 2=Not convinced 3=Possibly… 4=Compelling stuff 5=Holyshittheskyisfalling
 
Further Viewing: To see the level of quality of evidence for this myth, check out the 'Top 5 Loch Ness Monster Sightings' video on YouTube. Just shy of minutes, most of the evidence in this film has quality theories to debunk it.
 
What do you think? Comment below!

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The history of mankind is riddled with the weird and the wonderful; bizarre people, strange places and odd events. For centuries, we’ve told each other fantastic stories around campfires and in darkened rooms. Tales of ghosts, UFOs, and conspiracies, but are these stories exactly that: Stories? There’s only one way to find out! Join me as I dive down the rabbit hole and into… the Unexplained Files.
 
This week: MKUltra

WTF?
 
New York City, November 1953. Frank Olson, a US Army biochemist and biological weapons researcher, suffers a severe psychotic episode, which ends with him plummeting thirteen storeys from a hotel window to the streets below. Suicide, right? Not so fast. At the time of his death, his blood was coursing with the drug lysergic acid diethylamide – a.k.a. LSD. One week earlier, without his knowledge, Frank had been laced with the psychedelic drug as part of an experiment. As mental as that sounds, what's more mental is that the experiment was conducted by the CIA. On the evening of his death, an internal investigation at the CIA had ruled, Frank had been told that the drug was in his system, but he wasn’t informed the exact nature of the drug or its effect until twenty minutes later.
 
You’re Kidding, Right?
 
Nope. You read it right: Frank Olson died because he was given LSD by the CIA. See, the Agency was conducting experiments (sometimes illegal) on human test subjects with the main aim of identifying and developing drugs and procedures that could be used in interrogations to weaken the subject, thus making it easier to get confessions. I’ll just say that again. The CIA gave people LSD with a view to controlling their minds.
 
Surely after killing one of their own in poor Frank Olson, that brought a swift end to the MKUltra Program. Yeah, no. Not even close. The experiments continued for a further TWENTY years, and that’s just officially.
 
Hold Your Horses!
 
It gets worse. Aside from slipping unwitting US and Canadian citizens Mickeys, the program also used other charming methods to alter test subject’s mental states. Methods like isolation, verbal abuse, sensory deprivation and psychological torture.
 
By the time it was officially closed down in 1973, the project had included over forty colleges and universities, 12 hospitals or clinics, 15 research foundations, and three prisons.
 
So what about Frank Olson? Well, his family disputed the official story of his death. See, a few days before his death, he’d left his job. The toll it had taken on him was too great. The CIAs development of ‘assassination materials’ (I’m not sure what those are, but they sure as shit don’t sound nice), use of biological warfare materials, and cooperation with former Nazi scientists (they hired them at the end of WWII in the now infamous Operation Paperclip) were among the reasons he quit. Frank’s family thought the CIA were worried that he’d blab. Sounds crazy, right? It does, until you learn that a medical examiner told the Olsens that Frank had been knocked unconscious before he went through the window, ruling Frank’s death a “homicide”. In 1975, Frank’s family received a formal apology from then President Gerald Ford and CIA director William Colby, along with $750,000 from the US government. So, yeah, there’s that.
 
Make Your Mind Up Time.
 
Was Frank Olson the only death at the hands of MKUltra? We may never know. If they killed a dude then thought ‘fuck it, let’s carry on’ for another two decades, it would suggest not. So, how do we know about it?
 
Just after the Watergate incident caused the government to break out in assholes and shit themselves to death, then CIA director Richard Helms ordered all MKUltra files destroyed. But in a classic and monumental balls-up, 20,000 documents survived, because they’d been stored incorrectly in a financial records building, and in 1977, they were discovered in a Freedom of Information Act request. If not for that simple mistake, we’d have never found out about it. Dwell on that a while.
 
There are some who hold the belief that the experiments only closed down ‘officially’ in ’73, and that they actually carry on to this day. I can’t verify that, but again, if they carried on for twenty more years after killing a dude they worked with, it wouldn’t come as a massive shock. Did the CIA give people LSD in a mind control program named MKUltra? You’d better believe it.
 
RATING: 1=Bollocks 2=Not convinced 3=Possibly… 4=Compelling stuff 5=Holyshittheskyisfalling
 
Further reading/listening: the book The Men Who Stare at Goats by Jon Ronson. The MKUltra podcast episode by Those Conspiracy Guys (NSFW). And for those of you that think I’m making this shit up, there’s always the CIA’s own website...
 
If you enjoyed this, all of my Unexplained Files are in a handy little ebook on Amazon

Feel free to share with your friends! Use the buttons at the bottom of the page to follow me on Facebook and Twitter for more!

The history of mankind is riddled with the weird and the wonderful; bizarre people, strange places and odd events. For centuries, we’ve told each other fantastic stories around campfires and in darkened rooms. Tales of ghosts, UFOs, and conspiracies, but are these stories exactly that: Stories? There’s only one way to find out! Join me as I dive down the rabbit hole and into… the Unexplained Files.
 
This week: The Mothman.

WTF?
 
Point Pleasant, Virginia, 1966. One cold November evening, a local man (the exquisitely named Woody Derenberger) was driving home when he saw the road was blocked. The blockage, according to Woody, was a large, grey object. He pulled his car to a halt and watched in amazement as a figure emerged from said object and strode towards him. The figure introduced himself as a ‘searcher’ and comforted Derenberger, telling him not to be afraid. He told Derenberger his name was ‘Indrid Cold’ and declared that he would return, before climbing back aboard his strange craft, which promptly rose up and out of sight.
 
Baffled, Woody Derenberger rushed home, told his wife, then called the police and the press. For the town of Point Pleasant, this was just the tip of an extremely weird iceberg.
 
Go On…
 
A few weeks later, two young couples head to a well-known local lovers’ lane, looking for a little excitement. They were in for an evening they would never forget. Their fun was interrupted when, through the darkness, they saw something. Or rather, something saw them. Cowering in the relative safety of their car, they were staring at a pair of glowing red eyes.
 
Suitably freaked out, uttering popular 60s exclamations like “Gadzooks!” and “Jinkies!” (probably), they made like bananas, and split. (I promise, no more 60s gags.) The problem was, their new red-eyed friend followed. Not on foot. By air. According to the bunch of youngsters, their assailant was sporting a “ten-foot wingspan”. And so began the myth of the Mothman.
 
Hold Your Horses!
 
Kids? In the sixties? Surely, they were just high AF? Not so fast, my sceptical reader! Y’see, a few days earlier, five grave diggers saw the winged menace swooping over their heads. I imagine you’re now, in full-on disbeliever mode, envisioning a town full of drunks who can’t invoke pink elephants, so these poor folks end up with some flying monstrosity. Thing is, the town’s chilling new occupant was spotted several times over the next few months, by dozens of terrified residents.
 
Upon seeing the Mothman, witnesses would be filled with dread, and a sense of foreboding. That foreboding paid off well and truly when, a little over a year after Woody Derenberger’s run in with Indrid Cold and the first sighting of the Mothman, in December of 1967, the Silver Bridge collapsed. 46 people were killed.
 
Make Your Mind Up Time.
 
So?! With explanations from aliens, herons, to owls, many different theories have been offered up for what the Mothman was. Mass hallucination/hysteria and mistaken identity being the most common theories.
 
No doubt mass hallucination/hysteria is a powerful phenomenon, and during these times of stress, the suggestion of mistaken identity becomes all the more plausible. See, the thing is, I’m not sure I buy it…
 
Dozens of plausible witnesses reporting separate events, and at different times of day: is it possible that someone can mistake an owl for a tall humanoid? Among the early cases, some of the witnesses reported sightings before any word of ‘Mothman’ had got around, so they couldn't have been influenced by rumour and conjecture. And it’s all the weirder when we consider the encounter with Indrid Cold. Witnesses later came forward and said they’d seen Derenberger talking to Cold and later, many more townsfolk would have odd encounters with Cold themselves.
 
It’s all too easy to shout ‘Hoax!’ (or more recently ‘Fake News’) when faced with something that we don’t, or can’t, understand, but in the case of the Mothman, maybe, just maybe, reality is stranger than fiction.
 
RATING: 1=Bollocks 2=Not convinced 3=Possibly… 4=Compelling stuff 5=Holyshittheskyisfalling
 
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For more on the Mothman, check out the amazing episode 'Point Pleasant' on The Unresolved Podcast, or, for a more light-hearted and sweary review, check out the Those Conspiracy Guys podcast episode.

If you enjoyed this, feel free to share it with your friends! You can get this and other UNEXPLAINED FILES in a handy little book, just 99p from Amazon!

The history of mankind is riddled with the weird and the wonderful; bizarre people, strange places and odd events. For centuries, we’ve told each other fantastic stories around campfires and in darkened rooms. Tales of ghosts, UFOs, and conspiracies, but are these stories exactly that: Stories? There’s only one way to find out! Join me as I dive down the rabbit hole and into… the Unexplained Files.

This time, the case often referred to as Britain’s Roswell: The Rendlesham Forest Incident.

WTF?

Rendlesham Forest, England, December 1980. In the cold early hours of the 26th, just east of RAF Woodbridge, a routine patrol of the US base reported lights descending into the forest. Thinking it could be a downed aircraft, they hurried to the scene. As they neared, the noticed nearby farm animals going into “a frenzy”. Through the trees they claimed to see a triangular craft of “unknown origin”. So stunned by what he saw, one of the servicemen approached the black triangle, whipped out his notebook, and sketched the craft, noting its dimensions, and made a note of the strange hieroglyph markings on the craft. He even claimed to have touched the object!
 
“It’s back.”
 
Naturally, the story made its way around the base like wildfire. Just when things were starting to die down a little, a message reached the base from another patrol. The object, it seemed, was back. This time, Lt. Col. Charles Halt wanted to investigate for himself, with the aim of debunking the whole thing. Things didn’t quite work out as he’d hoped.
 
He took a group of men and a tape recorder and set out into the forest. They observed the light moving through the trees, and at one point saw it shooting a beam of light down into the forest. Instead of debunking the story, he’d invited a bunch of new witnesses to the whole affair.
 
You’re Kidding, Right?
 
After the first sighting, the police were called. When they arrived on the scene an hour after the servicemen, they noted that the only lights to be seen were from the nearby Orford Ness lighthouse.
 
Some sceptical analysis concurs with the idea that Lt. Col. Halt and company also saw the lights from the lighthouse.

They based this idea on Halt’s actual recording and the gap between the pulsing light fitting in with when the beam from the lighthouse swept the area.

Hold Your Horses!
 
So it’s all bunk? Not necessarily.

After the initial sighting, a survey of the site of the original landing revealed some startling evidence. On inspecting the ground where the triangular craft was supposed to have landed, the search revealed three indentations, forming a perfect triangle. When the indentations were given the Geiger counter treatment, they recorded ten times the normal background radiation. Not only that, but the trees above the indents all had broken branches from where the craft had made its rapid ascent. Something had been there.

Halt said of his own recording that the gap between light pulses wasn’t fixed, as his recorder only clicked on when he spoke; it’s not one continuous piece of audio.
 
Make Your Mind Up Time.
 
Is it really possible that several military men could mistake a lighthouse for a UFO? Mistake a beam of light coming from the sky, down to the ground? Sure. People make mistakes. They’re only human, after all. Here’s the thing: The lighthouse had a screen at one side, so that the light wouldn’t disturb landlubbers, meaning that the light would only be visible if you were approaching by sea. Something else to chew on: we’re talking about people with nothing to gain by lying. These are professional men with something to lose by coming forward. In the time that has elapsed since the event, Lt. Col. Halt has not changed one word of his story.
 
Was it aliens? That is something we may never know, but for my money, something happened in Rendlesham Forest in December 1980.
 
RATING: 1=Bollocks 2=Not convinced 3=Possibly… 4=Compelling stuff 5=Holyshittheskyisfalling
 
For more on this case, read former Ministry of Defence UFO investigator Nick Pope’s website, or view one of the hundreds of videos on the case online.

What do you think? Comment below!

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