An Occasional E-mail Bulletin from
Strange Magazine
July 27, 1997 Edition
THIS ISSUE
NEWS
STRANGE MAGAZINE 18 IS OUT THERE
OPSASNICK REVIEW UPSETS SOME BIGFOOT BELIEVERS
ROWLETT REPORTS ON
THE SURRENCY SPOOKLIGHT
REVIEW:
Reverse Time Travel by Barry Chapman
Reviewed by Douglas Chapman
STRANGE MAGAZINE NEWS
STRANGE MAGAZINE 18 IS OUT THERE
OPSASNICK REVIEW UPSETS BIGFOOT BELIEVERS; JOHN GREEN ENTERS SASQUATCH
FIELD AS HOAXER
Strange Magazine 18 has been mailed to all subscribers. It should hit
selected bookstores on August 1. There has been a tremendous early
response to issue 18. So far most of the attention has been on Karl
P.N. Shuker's Menagerie of Mystery, Tim Swartz's Oil Pit Squids piece,
the stunning cover by Greg Snook, the thunderbird photo drawings, and
Mark Opsasnick's highly critical review of the book Where Bigfoot Walks
(which includes his honest appraisal of the Pacific Northwest Bigfoot
scene).
In his review, Opsasnick referred to Bigfoot author/promoter John Green
as a former newspaperman - Bigfoot hoaxer - turned true-believer. This
statement took some Bigfooters by surprise, since Green is considered
by many Bigfoot fans to be a pillar of Bigfoot belief. While we
appreciate his book Sasquatch: The Apes Among Us for the material that
it includes, we do not hold Green in high esteem. Green, as some of you
know, completely ignored Ray Wallace's role in Bigfoot history,
including the Wallaces' position in the Birth of Bigfoot case in 1958,
despite the fact that Green himself visited Bluff Creek in 1958 and
found tracks there.
Despite the fact that some Bigfoot fans would prefer that the truth be
otherwise, it is a documented fact that John Green's entry into the
Sasquatch field was as a result of a hoax.
In a telephone conversation that reviewer Mark Opsasnick had with
Green, on May 7, 1988, the Sasquatch maven relayed to Opsasnick how he
got started in the Bigfoot business as a result of a hoax that he
pulled.
In 1955 he wrote an account of a hairy manbeast abducting a woman from
a Harrison Hot Springs spa. This phony account was published on the day
of the jokester: April 1.
Bigfoot hunter/exploiter Rene Dahinden was one person who thought that
the article was for real. Green recounts the episode in Sasquatch: the
Apes Among Us (Seattle, WA: Hancock House, 1978), p. 49: "At no time
did I have the slightest idea that there was anyone in the community,
or anywhere else, who didn't think the whole business was a joke. In
1956 Rene Dahinden came to my office looking for information that might
assist him in actually finding a Sasquatch...[he] swallowed the whole
thing. His visit made a good story , but I felt rather sorry for him."
Green's hoax article and its aftermath is also recounted in the
Time-Life book Mysterious Creatures (Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books,
1988), p. 117.
This hoax article inspired the village council at Harrison Hot Springs
to sponsor a phony Sasquatch hunt. Described as a "good-natured spoof,"
this promotional goof for the British Columbia Centennial actually
attracted the interest of the international press.
Green's hoax article had unexpected results-- it drew to him a number
of people who had seen Sasquatch or its tracks, and he soon found
himself an avocation.
(John Green's Sasquatch: The Apes Among Us is available as from Strange
Bookshop, PO Box 2246, Rockville, MD 20847 for $14.95 plus $3.00
shipping or online at www.strangemag.com/bookcat.bigfoot.html. Strange
17 is available for $7.95 from the same address or online at
www.strangemag.com/howtosubscribe1.html)
ROWLETT REPORTS ON THE SURRENCY SPOOKLIGHT
The Surrency Spook Light is a classic example of the ghost light
phenomena in the best tradition of the more famous ones, such as the
Marfa Light in Texas and the Brown Mountain Light in North Carolina.
The site of the Surrency Light (called the "spook light" by locals) is
centralized along a stretch of the Macon/Brunswick railway that runs
through Surrency, Georgia.
This phenomena was first brought to my attention in 1989 by my friend
Mr. James Joyner, who is a resident of nearby Baxley.
Mr. Joyner has witnessed the light several times and was kind enough
to allow his account to be retold here.
He described how he was standing on the train track at night when the
light appeared several hundred yards in front of him, hovering over the
railway.
Mr. Joyner's description of the light was "a very bright,
golden-yellow light, about the size and shape of a grapefruit."
When he tried to approach the light, it began to move toward him until
it finally blinked out, only to reappear behind him!
He describes his other experience as similar to the first.
The Surrency Light has been an observable phenomena since the turn of
the century.
Explanations for the light vary from the local belief that it is
somehow connected to the famous Surrency ghost that haunted the
hotel/home of A. P. Surrency (for whom the town is named) to a
mysterious geological formation underneath the ground in Surrency, as
theorized by Cornell University professor Larry Brown.
The Surrency hauntings were first written about in the Savannah
Morning News after the paper received a letter from A. P. Surrency.1
Hundreds of personal accounts from diaries, as well as books and
magazines, have described tables flying through the air, mirrors
exploding in hallways, clocks running wild after witnesses heard a
mysterious buzzing noise, hot bricks falling from the sky, lights
flickering in the dark, and unexplained voices screaming, crying or
laughing in and around the Surrency house.2
The hauntings continued until the house burned down in 1925.
Geological professor Larry Brown was part of a team that discovered
what may be an ancient reservoir of water or other fluid nine miles
beneath a pine forest in Surrency.
Dr. Brown is a director of the Cornell University-based Consortium for
Continental Reflective Profiling (COCORP) which is developing a
detailed picture of the Earth's mantle.
Dr. Brown describes this reservoir as "about two miles in diameter and
apparently shaped like a contact lens."3
He also states that "we really don't have a good idea what the
formation is composed of. If it is water, it would upset a lot of
scientific theories as it is theoretically impossible for water or
other fluids to exist at such a great depth due to the intense heat and
pressure."
When one considers the amount, the presence of a ghost light, spirit
manifestations and a weird geological formation, it would almost seem
as if there is perhaps what is sometimes referred to as a "window area"
or Lovecraftian doorway at the Surrency site.
My own investigation into the Surrency Spook Light is still in its
beginning stage and so will be reported on further as new data comes to
light.
NOTES
1. Savannah Morning News, Oct. 23, 1872 edition.
2. Barron, Ruth T., Footprints in Appling County (Dallas, Ga.: Taylor
Publishing Co., 1981), Chapter 10: "Surrency."
3. Surrency Bright Spot from IllumiNet computer file RBBS/DL BRIGHT TXT
5-24-87.
REVIEW
Reverse Time Travel
by Barry Chapman
Cassell, London, 1996, 160 pp., paperback, $16.95.
Reviewed by Douglas Chapman
With simplicity and clarity, Barry Chapman supports his case that time
travel is possible. Starting with "a brief history of everything,"
layer by layer, equation by equation, Chapman uses Einstein's theory of
General Relativity to show that there may be a way to travel back in
time. Such topics as the principle of equivalence, gravitational
curvature, black holes, and the twin paradox are brought into play.
While the present reviewer is not qualified to judge the efficacy of
the scientific theories involved, Chapman clearly explains his
premises.
He asks many of the proper questions. One is that: if time travel
exists, why have humans not knowingly met any travellers from the
future? In response to this, in his "five-dimensional hyperspherical
model" Chapman postulates that the time travellers may have ended up in
different universes from the one in which they started. But then, why
have travellers from elsewhere not shown up in the present universe?
Whatever its limits, his idea does explain why people cannot kill their
parents and then vanish out of existence themselves.
For Chapman, not only is the universe curved, but so are the fifth
dimension and the universes encompassed.
The universe's customary "curve balls" may abound, but the author tries
for clarity anyway. Useful appendices with supporting equations and a
subject- oriented bibliography make the book as easy to use as
possible. Whether one agrees or not, it is apt to broaden it readers'
horizons.
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including a piece on UFOS Before 1947.
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Editor: Mark Chorvinsky
Contributors this Issue: Curt Rowlett, Douglas Chapman, Mark
Chorvinsky
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