The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas

by Kevin Candela

Watch the 1957 movie. The brilliant Nigel Kneale screenplay really does cover it all, from the Shipton Expedition that found and photographed the famous “first” footprints (mentioned, having happened only a few years earlier in “reality”) to the nobly intentioned scientist, the opportunistic entrepreneur, the callous career bounty hunter and the legend-obsessed everyman who once caught a glimpse of the yeti. Best of all, the head lama at the Tibetan monastery is more than wise: He, like the yeti, stands clear of the petty human race, smiling knowingly as the ambitious quartet of visitors who seek to know if the creatures exist insist on risking it all in trying to find out. Even the Sherpa is important, despite his precious few lines. And so is the scientist’s wife, who is perhaps the only peer of the head lama in terms of innate wisdom.

What the hell is the Missouri Flying Humanoid?

by Kevin Candela

Hell may be the right word here. Look at the drawings. Consider the testimonials. What we’re talking about here is no extinct primate. This is a true monster, and I thank the brilliant Monsters and Mysteries in America for enlightening us as to this local legend’s existence.

Let’s start with the locale, because it’s a great one: Turkey Creek, Missouri, is not all that far from the Current and Jacks Fork Rivers and the National Scenic Riverways park that contains them. This is the Ozarks, pure and simple, and if you’ve been there, you know there’s plenty of woodlands, caves, water—in short, everything a man-sized creature would need to survive and live a private life. In fact there could be a bunch of these things in a place as remote as that part of the country.

Even Believers Sometimes Get to See Stuff

by Kevin Candela, March 7, 2017

This is an account of our experience on October 20, 2012. As this event is now over four years past, specific time references for that date are necessarily approximate.

Witnesses to this “close encounter of the first kind” were my wife Jackie and myself. Additionally, the occupant(s) of at least one other vehicle we saw in the vicinity at one point may have seen the same thing, in that they sat motionless at a stop sign long enough for us to pull up to the other side of it, wait our turn and then eventually go on because they still weren’t moving.

The Piasa Bird by Kevin Candela

by Kevin Candela

It’s been said that Shakespeare essentially wrote every plot there is, but if so it’s hard finding where he covered the Legend of the Piasa Bird. An absolutely captivating story with a rousing and unforgettable climax, the native saga as known to locals in its simplest form goes as follows: A great winged beast, effectively a flying chimera of human, reptile and bird, terrorizes the Mississippi River in this area (Alton and Godfrey, Illinois, which are positioned on the northern side of that east-west “kink” the river makes just north of its junction with the Missouri River). The natives of this area are being picked off at random by the monster, which takes its victims off somewhere to presumably devour them. If it has a nest or lair of any kind, it’s apparently nowhere near where it does its hunting.

The Roswell Event by Kevin Candela

by Kevin Candela

Dateline: October 22, 2016

Roswell, New Mexico

This isn’t about my odyssey across Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, although some aspects of what I saw along the way are applicable and will likely come up in the proceedings. This is about Roswell, New Mexico, and what my day-and-a-half stay there meant to me. How it felt. What I got out of it. There will of course be pictures.