Journal of the Bizarre

Not every secret society involves mystical chants, blood-chilling rituals, and nefarious plots to take control of the world's banking institutions, and members of secret societies aren't always shadowy figures dressed in hooded cloaks. Sometimes, they're trusted local newspaper reporters.

The Order of the Occult Hand is a "secret society" of American journalists which dates back to 1965, when a crime reporter from a Charlotte newspaper decided to spice up a mundane account of a domestic squabble by writing: It was as if an occult hand had reached down from above and moved the players like pawns upon some giant chessboard.

Joseph Flanders, the Charlotte News reporter who had penned the colorful passage, had managed to amuse his journalist colleagues so much that they decided to form a secret society around this phrase, and it wasn't long before Charlotte News staff reporters attempted to slip the words "it was as if an occult hand" into their own writ…

Since many important details remain to be released, it would be foolish for anyone to declare that this afternoon's shooting at the offices of the Annapolis Capital Gazette in Maryland is a false flag event, devoid of any real injuries or fatalities.

However, it is quite interesting that on June 22-- a mere six days ago-- the city of Annapolis announced several street closures as part of an active shooter drill.

On June 21, Deb Pelt of Patch.com reported that police departments would be holding an active assailant drill the following morning at the St.Mary's School campus on Duke of Gloucester Street. The article informed residents that Duke of Gloucester Street, from Green to Compromise Streets, will be shut down and all traffic detoured.

The report also stated:

Residents should be aware that real-life sights and sounds may be seen and heard along the periphery of the campus and a variety of emergency response vehicles will be in the area, authorities said.

Of course, it is worth…

The following story comes from the March 28, 1914 edition of the Madison Journal:


Williams, Ariz.--  In Wilson Canyon, southeast of Williams, is an uncanny spot wherein horses shy and bolt from terrors heretofore invisible to the human eye. At least three wagons have been wrecked there by runaways that started without apparent cause. But at last a veritable ghost has been materialized on the unshaken testimony of two young residents of the locality, Wright Clark and "Tex" Ownby.

They say that on a recent Sunday evening about dusk they were riding down the Wilson canyon trail when their horses became frightened, snorting and prancing in terror. The boys looked to the right and saw, emerging from behind a juniper tree, the form of a man at least six feet in height, with long gray hair and beard, clad in buckskin and dragging an old-fashioned gun about as long as himself.

Boys and horses stood as though enchanted, while the apparition circled them noiselessly. The circle about co…

The namesake of Poughkeepsie's Vassar College is Matthew Vassar, who made regular ghostly appearances to several different families occupying his farmhouse in New York in the years following his death. The following story appeared in the Washington Post on Jan. 31, 1914.

When it was reported that John R. Fell had died on the evening of February 22, 1933, inside his hotel room on the island of Java at the age of 43, the news sent shockwaves throughout Philadelphia. Fell was one of the best known jet-setters of the day, a noted sportsman, clubman, playboy and son of the obscenely wealthy Alexander Van Rensselaer and his equally wealthy wife Sarah Drexel Fell.

Because Fell's parents never had to work a day in their lives, neither did John. As a young man he devoted his life to the pursuit of leisure and the "sporting life". He was an excellent polo player, golfer, yachtsman and horseman, and in 1913 entered a horse in the Grand National Steeplechase at Liverpool. He sold his horses in 1916 at the height of the First World War and enlisted in the quartermaster corps.

After the war he ventured into the world of finance, and became a banker in Paris. This foray into the world of banking must have been done purely out of boredom; John had alread…

From voodoo to zombies, Haiti is a land steeped in mystery and superstition. The outside world knew very little about this island nation until the days of the Second Empire, which began in 1849 after the Haitian military, led by former slave Faustin Soulouque, launched an attack against the neighboring Dominican Republic, which was being bolstered by the French. By the end of the century, Great Britain, Germany and the United States would all stick their noses into the affairs of the Haitian people, and it was the soldiers from these countries who brought back hair-raising tales of human sacrifice, occult rituals and cannibalism.

In July of 1891 a Hungarian mechanic, Maurice Feldmann, was working in the machine shops at a settlement called O'Gorman, about eight miles from Port-au-Prince. At the time, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was a world leader in machine manufacturing, thanks in part to Haitian slave labor. He learned that there was to be a child sacrifice near his home, sched…

When the city of Topeka unofficially changed its name to Google for a month in 2010, it was a publicity stunt that made headlines all across the world. Though most people view this sort of affair as a cheap gimmick intended to boost retail sales or tourism, it hasn't prevented other towns and cities across America from following suit. But while the majority of these name changes are temporary, unofficial measures, there are some towns whose names reflected the influence of corporate overlords for decades.

Linoleumville, New York, is one such example.

Located on the western shore of Staten Island, the town known as Travisville was selected in 1872 to be the site of the American Linoleum Manufacturing Company factory and headquarters. As this was the nation's first linoleum factory, many jumped at the chance to get in on the ground floor of what was then a high-tech industry. Although linoleum had been invented by Frederick Walton in England in 1855, the process for its manufac…

Established in 1836 and named for early settler Joseph Bertrand, the rural township of Bertrand in Berrien County, Michigan, is home to many people of French Canadian and Native American ancestry. Undoubtedly, there are those living in Bertrand Township who, if they trace their family trees back far enough, may be surprised to discover that they share common ancestors with Pierre and Rose, two young lovers whose spirits are said to haunt the local graveyard.

According to local folklore, shortly before the St. Joseph Mission was abandoned in 1855 (built on the site of an earlier Jesuit mission established by a priest named Father Allouezin in 1690) there was a young French Canadian settler named Pierre Snydam who divorced his wife, Rose, after three unhappy years of marriage. Rose found her husband to be something of an insensitive brute, while Pierre was jealous of his wife's friendliness toward the local Indians, and toward a Potawatomi brave in particular named Gray Eagle.

On t…

The accompanying newspaper article, from the May 19, 1895 edition of the Galveston Daily News, describes a young man from Florida whose head measured 50 inches in circumference (by comparison, the average circumference for an adult head is somewhere in the vicinity of 22.5 inches). What makes the story even more remarkable is that the young man, who was 21 at the time, wasonly 3 feet tall.

Yahoo was the first email service I have ever used and (up until today) continued to be my primary email provider. Since creating my account in 1997 I have begrudgingly consented to the occasional forced upgrade and updated terms of service, not because I wanted to, but because, like millions of Yahoo users, I had grown too complacent to be bothered with the inconvenience of creating a new email account.

With all of the recent scandals surrounding the misuse of personal data and private information by the likes of Facebook, Cambridge Analytica and others, the last thing I expected to see today, when I logged into my Yahoo account, was an updated TOS that, in essence, grants Yahoo and its host of corporate cronies more access to your personal information than you'd feel comfortable giving to your own spouse or children.

Needless to say, I will not consent to such an agreement, and since I have used Yahoo to communicate with many of you, as well as Journal of the Bizarre's sponso…

Few institutions in 19th century America were as fascinating as the city morgue. In virtually every major city, the morgue was thronged with visitors on weekends, and the crowds were comprised of people from all walks of life. Some were there to identify the remains of loved ones, but most were there merely for entertainment. For instance, in one article from an 1897 newspaper, a reporter vividly describes the scene at Chicago's city morgue on a Sunday:

"While the deputy coroner was speaking, a bevy of damsels not to exceed 14 years of age, neatly dressed and bright looking, stole quietly into the room. They trod on tiptoe and spoke in whispers, yet they made the round and looked in turn on the face of every body in the boxes."

According to this particular reporter, the Chicago morgue entertained over 1,000 guests on the day of his visit, and the spectators ranged from mothers with young children to couples on their first date. While this may seem like a rather morbid way…

This blog would not exist had it not been for Art Bell. And, if you have a website, blog, podcast or YouTube channel devoted to the paranormal, psychic phenomena, UFOs, conspiracy theory or cryptozoology, there's a pretty good chance that your digital footprint, like mine, falls inside a much larger footprint first laid by Mr. Bell in 1984.


I guess what I'm trying to say is that nobody can ever fill Art's shoes.


From the earliest days of my youth I have been a fan of AM radio. For as long and I can remember, I have always needed some kind of noise to help me sleep. Each and every night I fell asleep to the radio, tuned in to some AM station from an exotic faraway place, like Toledo. Sometimes I could even pull in Sandusky, if the skies were clear and the moon was just right. I especially liked that Sandusky station because in the wee hours of night they would replay old variety shows from the Golden Age of Radio, with performers like Jimmy Durante, Judy Garland, Milton Be…

While the famous saying "all is fair in love and war" can be traced back to the 16th century English poet John Lyly, the purest expression of this sentiment came during the First World War, when belligerent nations attempted to gain a strategic advantage by any means necessary-- even if it meant using propaganda to tout the devastating effects of frightening super-weapons that did not exist.
It's easy to understand why the Allied Powers and Central Powers alike claimed to be in possession of weapons that were wholly fictitious-- it is an effective form of psychological warfare that dates back to ancient times. If you happened to be a Roman sailor during the invasion of Syracuse, for instance, few things would be as demoralizing as the prospect of spontaneous combustion at the hands of Archimedes' "death ray".

During World War I, one of the most horrible weapons imaginable was said to be in the hands of the French military-- a deadly gas known as "Turp…