DAVEY CURTIS IS AT BOLAM...

With uncharacteristic briefness, Dave Curtis wrote: "I took this picture of what appears to be a critter sticking its head out behind a tree.It looks like a meercat.Davy.C"

Bolam is of course the forest where I encountered a zooform BHM six years ago; only part of a long series of strange animal sightings in the area..

MIKE HALLOWELL: Geordie Monsters IV

There's an old maxim in Geordieland, that says it's always darkest just before it goes completely black; or, if you like, as one door shuts, another one slams in your face. As you'll have gathered, we Tynesiders are an optimistic lot, and we have to be when it comes to cryptozoology. Our kingdom is veritably teeming with cryptids and zooforms, but hardly any of them ever get identified. Its not for the want of trying; its just that we have other things on our mind, such as paying the rent and getting the kids back from the pawn shop.

One of the advantages the Geordie nation possesses when it comes to cryptozoology is our environment. We have mountains (although they're not very big ones), hills, moors, forests, lakes, rivers, a sea and a profusion of urban-cum-industrial sprawls. All of these provide a perfectly natural environment for just about any kind of cryptid you care to mention, and then some.

It never fails to amaze me what a spectacular collection of unidentified fauna we've accrued over the centuries - and how terrible we are at singing their praises.

We have hairy hominids (the Beast of Bolam Lake), dragons (The Laidley Worm of Spindleston Heugh), sea monsters (the Shony), alien big cats (the Cleadon Panther), black dogs (the Boldon Black Dog), cylathines (probably, such as the Boojum of Jesmond Vale), wolves (the Hexham Wolf) and dozens of others too many to mention.

To be honest, despite our incredible cryptozoological menagerie, I still end up feeling frustrated. To date, I haven't found any evidence of swamp monsters, for example Mind you, this could just be due to the fact that we haven't any swamps, although we do have some swamp-like bogs in Northumberland where, I have recently been told, a creature of unknown provenance dwells.

I don't want to say too much about it at the moment, as I'd like to get another book out of the story if it proves to have some substance to it, but the tale goes something like this:

Last summer, a rambler was out walking in Northumberland when he saw something run across his field of vision and dive into a bog. He described the creature as five ft. in height, brown/green in colour and scaled. The beast was essentially anthropomorphic, but also possessed a tail, had no discernible ears and sported a reddish, serrated crest upon its head and spine. Its face was, he said, "snout-like" and resembled that of a German Shepherd in shape.

The chap who related the story to me was himself the eye-witness, but was very cautious about getting his name splashed all over the press. He didn't mind me telling the world about his encounter with "the thing", providing that his name was not released as he felt that it wouldn't do his career prospects much good. Trust me, if you knew what he did for a living, you'd understand why. I have given him my solemn word not to divulge his personal details to anyone until he feels its appropriate to do so.

The witness who saw the creature strikes me as perfectly reliable and I got no indication that he was fibbing. What threw me completely was being contacted by a second witness less than two weeks later who claimed to have seen the very same beast - or at least, something very close to it. This time, the witness managed to keep the creature in view for around two minutes.

Normally I'm a trusting soul, but I couldn't help but be suspicious. It wasn't so much that two people claimed to have seen the same creature that bothered me, but the location of the second sighting. It was literally miles away from the first location, and by no stretch of the imagination could I conceive that the same animal could have moved from one to the other without being spotted many times. It had to be a different beast of the same species, or I was being set up to look like an idiot. Another problem was the nature of the second location; it just seemed the most unlikely place for some sort of lizardy dude to be living. Still, in the weird and wonderful world of cryptozoology, you never can tell. After all, the woods at Bolam Lake aren't much bigger than my front lawn, but there was a hairy hominid dodging about in their for bloody months.

Over the coming weeks I'll try to put together some more detail and, if possible, release more of the story via this blog. Are the accounts true? At this stage I honestly don't know, but I've seen nothing which makes me intrinsically suspicious - yet. Naturally, if anyone in or around Tyneside or Northumberland has seen this creature - or knows someone else who has - I'd like to hear about it.

Like I say, watch this space...

WHAT HAPPENED AT BOLAM LAKE

Tim was, I think, very brave to say what he did about his own experiences, in his article about the `Oz Factor` which we published this morning. I can appreciate that because, as he alluded in his article, something very strange happened to me almost exactly six years ago, in early 2003. So, for those who are not aware of it, I am republishing a piece I wrote for a popular magazine soon afterwards...

I am a scientist, and although my job entails traveling around the world investigating accounts of mystery animals, I have – nearly always – been able to provide a solid scientific explanation for the things that witnesses have reported. However, a couple of years back – almost three years to the day that I am writing this – I found myself in the position of being confronted with something that I really was unable to explain within any scientific frameworks…..

“What the hell was that?” I shouted as a giant man-like creature ran through the woods before me, illuminated only by the headlights of my Jaguar. It was well over 7 ft in height, thickly built, and was as fast as an Olympic athlete. But it wasn’t human. Was this in the forests of western China? In the foothills of the Himalayas? In the dense woods of the Pacific north-west of the USA? Nope. It was just after dusk, on a January evening, in a country park less than 40 miles from Newcastle city centre.

The Centre for Fortean Zoology is the only professional organisation in the world dedicated to research into mystery animals. In our time we have camped out on the shores of Loch Ness, searched through caves systems in Thailand for giant snakes, hunted Vampires in Puerto Rico, and trekked through swamps in Florida in search of the mysterious `Skunk Ape`. Just before Christmas 2002 we began to receive reports of a giant, hairy, ape-like creatures appearing in isolated tracts of woodland across the United Kingdom. We were sceptical at first, but we could not ignore these reports, and so without further ado we decided to go and investigate.

These things have been seen all over the country, but the biggest numbers of sightings were at an isolated country park – at Bolam in Northumberland. We have been investigating reports of strange animals around the world for 15 years now and we have the equipment to carry out investigations under all sorts of conditions. However, bizarrely, we have never gone on an expedition during an English winter before. However, over the years, we've got quite good at putting expeditions together on a shoestring and with only a couple of days to prepare ourselves.

Within days we were in a pub outside Newcastle with `Naomi` - a forty-year-old housewife who has asked to remain anonymous - and her fourteen-year-old son. `David`. She told us how – in the first week of January – they had been visiting the country park when they had an encounter with “a huge, black figure like an enormous shadow only dark and solid”, and she told us that even though the thing was standing still she had the feeling that it was “rushing at her”.

Another witness, Neil – a young man in his early twenties – reported how he had been night fishing at the lake with two friends. When they saw a giant figure “with shimmering eyes”, staring at them from out of the woods. On another occasion they were camping out when they heard the noise of a huge animal moving through the undergrowth outside their tent. They were too scared to look out, but in the morning their camp was wrecked and their bait was gone.

On our first day at the lake something very strange happened. Every piece of electrical equipment we had with me – including our mobile phones and the laptop computer – ended up with a flat battery, and strange noises were heard in the woods by several of our party. However, nothing could have prepared us for the shock, and thrill, of encountering the `beast` itself. Although our encounter lasted only a few seconds it has become indelibly etched into my brain, and I know it will remain with me forever.

What was it we saw that evening? I am certain that it wasn’t a man. It was too large and too fast. Could it have been an animal? As a scientist, although I am perfectly happy to admit the possibility that huge unknown species of ape can and do live in central Asia, and even in parts of North America, but no matter how hard I try, I cannot believe that there is an entire population of unknown great apes living in modern Britain undetected by man. It has to be something less tangible, a phantasm whose existence is governed by completely different rules of physics to anything that we as scientists presently know. If we could find out what it was, and how it can exist, then science would know a heck of a lot more about the workings of the universe than it does at the moment.

One thing is completely certain, however. Although I have seen many strange things and been to many strange places in my career as a monster hunter those few seconds in mid January was the weirdest thing that has ever happened to me, and I know that I will remember them for the rest of my life.

GUEST BLOGGER TIM MATTHEWS: NORMAL SERVICE WILL BE RESUMED…..

Tim Matthews is one of my best friends, and also - coincidentally - one of the most controversial figures in contemporary forteana. He has been involved with the CFZ for nearly a decade now, raising eyebrows wherever he goes.

Bolam Lake, 2003. A group of investigators, including friends from the CFZ, assembled to investigate sightings of a “monster” seen locally by supposedly credible witnesses.

Sadly, I wasn’t there but I remember a frantic phone call from a clearly shocked Jon Downes telling me, within hours of unfolding events, that “it has been seen by members of the team!” . The real deal. The first time for a multiply sighted creature in the woods! It was there. They all saw it.

They didn’t get it on film.

But they knew it was there because. Because…..

Everyone there seems to have been seriously affected, for a brief time. But by what? The convergence of unusual electric fields? The opening of a temporal zone? Arrival of the Klingons, Dance of the Loomi or the emergence of a Temporary Temple? It is hard to say but the Oz Factor is what we’re really talking about. The term itself came into general use in the early 1980s via author Jenny Randles and has been largely misunderstood as it is difficult to adequately explain what happens to people who experience it. Perhaps the fact she has written so much about it indicates that she hasn’t actually experienced it herself…

So what IS it?

It is when everything goes weird. When your normal state departs to be replaced by a weird sensation of calm mixed with panic, wonder and excitement. It is a heightened state of awareness, super consciousness and of Being Alive. It can be joyful but I would explain it is Awesome and I shall come back to that in a minute. What takes place during “it” is varied from supposed “alien encounters” to deeply religious experiences to encounters with strange beings. It is like being at one with The Source. A man I know well, who had a similar experience, described it as “LSD at one mile an hour”.

This, you may feel, has nothing to do with Cryptozoology and whilst our focus should always be Zoological, it seems that, for some, the Paranormal is never far away.

One night in the early 1990s during a pleasant evening stroll with my dog in a Lancashire village I experienced the Oz Factor myself. It was around 10pm, dark, dry, and suddenly, after an uneventful walk of perhaps two miles through familiar surroundings, all went...odd. Quiet. Deeply Calm. Still, like the lull after a battle; a thousand times more powerful than the discovery of a lake in woods on a winter’s morning. As if you have been here all your life and as if everything is that bit more real….just for a while.

The dog cowered, and, above a bridge perhaps 200ft away, a bright light rose up and appeared to turn into an angelic figure. Trippy stuff for sure and, at the time, I remember saying to myself, “this cannot be happening.” But it was. Without a doubt. In a trance-like state I walked back to my house and went upstairs to bed, at which point my girlfriend came upstairs to see what was the matter because I was behaving most unusually. At the time, lying down, I felt as if I couldn’t move. I was stuck there, paralysed and talking in a strange voice; speaking in tongues no less and this was entirely beyond anything experienced before...

The next day, it was as if the whole thing had never happened and yet I can remember the events to the extent that they are reported above. A convergence of electrical fields? An altered state of consciousness or a reaction to the evening meal? It is hard to know what to say and yet I reject the alien abductions hypothesis because it doesn’t explain what happened. I don’t think it was a ghost or anything similar and my general feeling is that this was something triggered from the outside that affected me. Too much caffeine, as suggested in a news report this week? The result of too much fun at illegal raves or, indeed, the ravings of a madman?

Only you can decide as medical science has nothing to offer beyond questionable medication or classes for meditation to still the awkward mind. As far as Cryptozoology is concerned we still cannot explain the group effect as reported around Bolam Lake in 2003. The weird events described certainly make sense to me despite their open challenge to the natural conservatism of mainstream science. It remains to be seen whether a reasonable explanation can be found but the hunt for mystery animals will, it seems, be associated with Paranormal phenomena as long as we continue to look for them…and as long as "it" keeps happening...