Old News

From GWU's The Hatchet newspaper, 1975.

Labeling things one doesn't understand "Nazi" is nothing new.  From UFO Newsclipping Service, 1988.

We initially mistook this headline to mean that the couple were seaching the lyrics of Blues songs for appearances of Bigfoot.  Cue Harry James' "Feet Draggin' Blues," but not Blind Lemon Jefferson's "Stocking Feet Blues" (because Bigfoot goes barefoot).  Bob Marley sang, "Your feet is just too big for your shoes."  The old folk song "Ol' Virginny Never Tire" mentions how "the hollow of her foot makes a hole in the groun'."  There's an old folk rhyme about "Johnny Bigfoot" who would have to kick two cows out of their skins to have shoes that fit.  The Ink Spots sang how "there were four of us: me, your big feet, and you."  Then there's the Moody Blues, who sing of how "the earth shook under my feet."  Johnny Cash's "Big Foot" is about a different Bigfoot—the Miniconjou chief.  We're little acquainted with the Blues genre, so no dount many more Sasquatches are lurking in those sonic realms.  Someone should write a book about how Bigfoot hides in music.

Interesting to see how the topics of UFOs and Bigfoot/Yeti/Abominable Snowman sometimes merge in news articles.  In these three random examples, we find references to "UFO 'Snowmen'" and UFOs that "left nothing but their 'footprints.'"

From UFO Newsclipping Service, 1971, 1974, and 1984.

Having traveled extensively through Cornwall, we can vouch for it being this magical, indeed.  "Dragon spotting day has arrived.  Today is, of course, St. George's Day and by way of celebration we are conjuring up a dragon in Cornall."  From UFO Newsclipping Service, 1986.

From Santa Clara's 1973 yearbook.

Before "What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas" (2003), there was Mexico's mysterious triangle of silence.  From UFO Newsclipping Service, 1982.

We love how the desperate explanations to demystify UFO sightings tend to be nuttier than anything.  We actually embrace this idea of wormpickers triggering UFO phenomena, because it's extraordinarily surreal.  When one begins to catalog all the things the skeptics think are populating the sky (fireballs, hang gliders, blimps, enough weather balloons to blot out the sun), it's clear that some people are hallucinating—just not necessarily the UFO spotters.  Funny how we've never personally seen fireballs in the sky, or weather balloons, or hang gliders (aside from a sort of kite glider pulled by a speedboat at the beach), and the golden age of blimps is long, long past — perhaps we simply can't detect reality with the "rational" eyes of skepticism.  From UFO Newsclipping Service, 1975.  

The famous six-word story popularly attributed to Hemingway, "For sale: baby shoes, never worn," pales in comparison to this six-word headline: "Man on lonely beach sees UFO."  While the Hemingwayesque story is tragic, it's excruciatingly mundane.  Yes, life is fragile—welcome to reality.  We can see why Hemingway got credited with this six-word story — he wrote about how The Sun Also Rises and how it rains in spring, other excruciatingly ordinary topics.  Mortality, sunrises, and rainfalls aren't interesting.  Granting that the headline recalls The Old Man and the Sea, the flash of extraterrestrial mystery saves it from humdrum existence.

We spotted a sort of follow-up headline, from six years later.  Another man on a lonely beach (at 2:30 a.m.) saw a UFO float in with the tide.

Headlines courtesy of UFO Newsclipping Service, 1975, 1981.

"No secerts any more" -- from back in 1965.

"Mystery apparently unraveled.  Bigfoot's named Butch."  From UFO Newsclipping Service, 1974.

"Can you enjoy being a housewife?"  Without irony, we'd recommend wrinkle-free fabrics and wrinkle-releasing sprays.  From Awake magazine, 1961.

We applaud this headline (finally, news we can believe!) and also the portrait for depicting the thrice great Charles Fort with a halo.  From UFO Newsclipping Service, 1990.  The headline reads, "Fortean followers are keeping spirit of the weird alive."

From an era when journalism still had integrity: "Something strange is going on."  From UFO Newsclipping Service, 1993.

Reblog if "swat life" is something we're born into, not something we choose.  From Swarthmore's 1994 yearbook.

This is the one and only occurrence of the phrase "de-monsterably shy," making it a Googlewhack.  From UFO Newsclipping Service, 1985.

With the advent of political correctness, physicists no longer stomp on tiny space aliens, not even with scientific rigor.  From UFO Newsclipping Service, 1970.  The headline reads, "U.S. physicist steps on little green men."

"Snicker if you like but [cryptozoologists] don't care."  They write stuff like How to Spot the Loch Ness Monster Every Time and A Field Guide to Identifying Unicorns by Sound.

From UFO Newsclipping Service, 1989.

"Canada doesn't exist."  From The Varsity, Sept. 10, 1975.

Wookie tracks (like Bigfoot) and flying saucers perplex the Vaders, years before the debut of Star Wars.  From UFO Newsclipping Service, 1971.