The Day The Devil Left His Mark In The Snow

In early February 1855, especially on night of the 8th, there was some light snowfall in Devon and other parts of the country. Not unlike, I suspect, the situation we find ourselves with right now.

So not all that interesting, except when people woke up in the morning back then they didn't have train websites to check or BBC News 24 hours coverage to watch and instead went outside and took a look around at the winter wonderland. That's when they found something a little... disturbing.

Early risers in Devon, and across the south of the country, discovered sets of prints set out in straight line. Not only that but moving in ways no normal creature would seem to be able. Walls didn't seem to stop them, neither did downpipes nor it would seem did the River Exe. Sometimes the prints would stop and then, after some distance, resume. They were vaguely horseshoe shaped but did not appear to be made by a four hoofed animal.

Of course the local fundies announced immediately that the devil was wandering the villages searching for sinners, whilst others blamed some recently escaped kangaroos near Sidmouth. My favourite explanation is that an experimental balloon of some sort had been set free and trailed rope from the side. As it bounced up and down in the air on it's way the rope would touch down and leave the horseshoe shape (which does appear from sketches to have changed slightly each time). Of course that would lead to an even greater mystery: how would these ropes avoid becoming tangled in trees??

The mystery was never solved.... but reared it's head again last year Woolsery. Alas it would seem our favourite mystery investigators, the Centre for Fortean Zoology, think it was probably a deer.

Further Reading

The Book of the Damned - Charles Fort (US Amazon, UK Amazon)

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Nazi UFOs: Not Just In Antarctica

The Nazis; don't you wish they'd just die already? If it's not bad enough having to sit through years of Nazi history levels, hearing about their bombing raids and V weapons from my great aunt and being forced to endure a never ending series of rubbish movies about them, we also have to deal with a multitude of conspiracy theories about them: did their leaders escape to South America/Antarctica/the Moon (some did make it out but not as far as the Moon me thinks)? Did they really kill so many Jews (YES, and they weren't even content just with the Jews, they took out millions of other people from many different groups while they were at it)? And did they create and use flying saucers during (and perhaps after) the Third Reich?

In the 30th of March 1950 edition of "Der Spiegel" an interesting interview was featured supplementary to a story regarding the ongoing mystery of sightings of flying saucers. The interview was with Rudolph Schriever who claimed to have been part of a team who was developing blueprints for a rotor powered flying saucer during the later stages of the Second World War.

Der Spiegel mock up of supposed flying saucer

It operated by means of rotors moving around the sides of the cockpit, rather than above like in a helicopter, and was being designed to travel at supersonic speeds.

Artists impression

If you forget it was being designed by an evil empire then it's actually a rather cool concept, but even "Captain" Schriever was clear that it had never gotten beyond the research stage.

Whilst Major Rudolf Lusar devoted little space in his book German Secret Weapons of the Second World War to flying saucers he seems to suggest something more:

Flying saucers have been whirling round the world since 1947, suddenly turning up here and there, soaring in and darting off again at unprecedented speed with flames encircling the rim of the saucer's disc. They have been located by radar, pursued by fighters and yet nobody has so far succeeded in establishing the existence of such a 'flying saucer' or managed to ram or shoot one down. The public, even the experts, are perplexed by an ostensible mystery or a technical miracle. But slowly the truth is coming out that even during the war German research workers and scientists made the first moves in the direction of these ''flying saucers''. They built and tested such near-miraculous contraptions. Experts and collaborators in this work confirm that the first projects, called "flying discs", were undertaken in 1941. The designs for these ''flying discs'' were drawn up by the German experts Schriever, Habermohl and Miethe, and the Italian Bellonzo. Habernohl and Schriever chose a wide-surface ring which rotated round a fixed, cupola-shaped cockpit. The ring consisted of adjustable wing-discs which could be brought into appropriate position for the take-off' or horizontal flight. respectively. Miethe developed a discus-shaped plate of a diameter of 42m in which adjustable jets were inserted. Schriever and Habermohl, who worked in Prague, took off with the first "flying disc'' on February 14, 1945. Within three minutes they climbed to an altitude of I2,400m and reached a speed of 2,000 km/h in horizontal flight (!) It was intended ultimately to achieve speeds of 4,000 km/h.

Unsurprisingly it seems Major Lusar was being somewhat loose with the truth and drew on several different Nazi UFO news stories to get his information. Check out this page for extensive info on the different articles and Major Lusar's full copy on flying saucers. However the influence of his book, and of the articles from the '50s that inspired his writing, on the subject of Nazi UFOs has become so embedded most sites seem to take them at face value. Take a look at this site for some sceptical views and remember there is no physical evidence to support this programme which some have dubbed the "V-7". Which means now I've got to go and find out what the V4, the V5 and the V6 supposedly were. Darn it.

Well the concept of the V-7 is a lot saner than some of the other gumph out there. Some believer that the Nazi's were helped by extraterrestrials. One statistic that kept being mentioned in a recent "UFO Hunters" episode was that the Germans were "25 years ahead in terms of science and technology" as opposed to the rest of the planet. Have you ever heard such painfully idiotic and naive comments? So they were 25 years ahead of us in terms of what exactly? What did they have that without their help we wouldn't have got until 1970? And if they were why the hell didn't they win? I cannot bring myself to go into the details today, I'll save it for another day when I able to put up with historical inaccuracy and lack of even a pretense of being bothered about evidence. Can you tell UFO Hunters rubs me up the wrong way? Do they not understand that their constantly biased approach to evidence gathering is totally off putting to any sane lay person tuning in? Are they in fact a secret Government conspiracy to persuade us that all Ufologists are in fact narcissistic loons? If so, it's working.

My great aunt once saw a V-2 strike the house across the allotments from the house she still lives in. Sort of moment in time that lives with you especially as she knew the people who died very well. If I were to ask her whether the Nazi's would have hesitated to use any new alien tech to conquer their enemies I think I already know her answer. But anyway more of that when we return to this subject some other time.

Further Reading

"German Secret Weapons of the Second World War" - Rudolf Lusar (UK Amazon, US Amazon)

Nazi International: The Nazis' Postwar Plan to Control Finance, Conflict, Physics and Space - Joesph P. Farrell (UK Amazon, US Amazon)

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D.B. Cooper: The One That Got Away

I have a bomb in my briefcase. I will use it if necessary. I want you to sit next to me. You are being hijacked.

Wednesday 24th November 1971 was just another day for Florence Schaffner, an air hostess on Flight 305 from Portland, Oregon to Seattle, Washington. It was the day before Thanksgiving and perhaps her thoughts were turning to the festivities that were soon to come as she sat in her jump seat. She probably didn't realise that the passenger in seat 18c wasn't coming on to her as she pocketed the note he gave her. Just another chancer passing her his phone number. Her level of shock must of been pretty high when the guy turned round to her and said:

"Miss, you'd better look at that note. I have a bomb."

As well as telling her the plane was being hijacked the note also carried demands that when the plane landed in Seattle he was to be brought 2 sets of parachutes, $200 000 in $20 dollar notes (unmarked of course) and threatened to blow up the plane if these demands were not met exactly.

The pilot William Scott was told by the FBI after a quick response by the emergency services to cooperate with the hijacker and he asked Schaffner to confirm whether this guy had a bomb. She returned to the cockpit with confirmation having seen inside the briefcase and brought the request from the hijacker that they were not to land until the parachutes and money was ready on the ground.

The FBI gathered the money, making microfilm copies so they could track them down should they be used, and managed to find some parachutes at a local skydiving school. The plane landed and whilst the negotiations commenced, our hijacker generously requested food be brought for the crew. After the goods were delivered to the plane he quickly released all the passengers and stewardess Schaffner but kept all 3 of the flight crew and one other stewardess on the plane.

Once he was satisfied with all the arrangements he ordered the pilot to fly to Mexico City at an unusually low altitude and speed. He ordered the last stewardess to go to the cockpit and stay there and as she left she saw him putting on a harness. Moments later the cockpit instruments recorded the door being open and when they attempted to ask if he need any assistance the crew were rebuffed with a loud "No!!"

Somewhere over the southern part of the state of Washington he lowered the aft stairs and jumped... never to be seen again.

He'd used the name Dan Cooper when booking the seats, but thanks to a misprint in a press article he will always be known as D.B. Cooper to most people. And the fact that his was the first ever unsolved airplane hijacking and that no one had ever seen him since has caused this case to be one of great interest.

The FBI and US Army made one of the largest ground searches in history across Washington state and the FBI began a sweep of the country looking for the banknotes they had given Cooper. They found nothing. Nada. Zip.

In 1978 a hunter in the area found the placard from the plane giving instructions on how to open the aft stairs.

In 1980 a boy on a picnic with his family found $5880 on a riverbank which belonged to Cooper's haul and after careful study it was found they'd probably washed up there sometime after 1974 from one of the rivers in Cooper's landing zone.

Given that the notes have never been found in circulation and that part of his stash washed up in a river it seems unlikely that Dan Cooper survived his jump. But until his remains are found, speculation over his ultimate fate will continue.

Further Reading

D. B. Cooper: Portrait of an American Hijacker (UK Amazon, US Amazon)

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