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The Dog That Turned Into Green Mist, Cows Standing On Hind Legs & Other Cases Of Gibbering Insanity

We have lots of deer up here and sometimes, at a distance, it's hard to tell what you are watching run - deer, fox or hare. When there is nothing to compare for scale, that brown thing streaking up a hedgeline could be almost anything! They can all be very similar colours too - so yes, I also suspect that the 'enormous hare' was a deer.
 
Min Bannister said:
Yes. It's the scariest thing ever.
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you too huh? I keep telling myself that it's Elliot O'Donnell and so mainly a load of old bobbins but... In his account I think the person who experiences it runs to the ?housekeeper who tells her to come away and not look as what comes after is worse!
 
Frideswide said:
you too huh? I keep telling myself that it's Elliot O'Donnell and so mainly a load of old bobbins but... In his account I think the person who experiences it runs to the ?housekeeper who tells her to come away and not look as what comes after is worse!
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Oooohhhh yes!

AARRGHHH! :eek: :freak:
 
So... shall I book us in for a sleepover? :rollingw:
 
Analogue Boy said:
A search on ‘the dog’ gives no results. Possibly the most awkward and cumbersome thread title on here I reckon.
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Oh, I know! I thought I was being terribly amusing, but no-one warned me that the thread would hang around for nearly twenty years.
I was in my twenties when I posted this thread; now heading for fifty. With a few other changes here and there too...
 
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Strangely enough I tend to believe the most bizarre tales, it's almost if the cosmic joker is daring people to report it, it like the mystery big cats spotted allover the UK especially the Black Panther ones, which are very rare in their natural environment but according to some the UK has quite a population roaming freely across hill and dale
 
Many years ago a nice little documentary called "The Ghostman of Skye" was shown on the BBC; an edited version of a longer film I think.

There is a truly dire quality copy on YouTube but just good enough to give a flavour of the incomprehensible story related at about 12:01 minutes onward, "The Thing in the Road"

 
There is something deep in our psyche that gets unsettled by tales of gibbering insanity. I know it's fiction, but Coraline (the story by Neil Gaiman which involves people with buttons sown over their eyes) is an example of something whose improbability goes off the scale but is nevertheless deeply disturbing.

I gonna go and reread this from the beginning :)
 
OK, been meaning to post this here for a while, because it is utterly bizarre, and gave me the creeps for a month when walking home from work through a patch of woodland during the dark winter evenings. Culled from Close Encounters at Kelly and others of 1955 by Isabel Davis and Ted Bloecher, original published in March 1978 by CUFOS. Apologies for the long post, but I don't think this encounter is very wll known, so have copied at length. American spelling, as in the original:

Chapter VII, The Hunnicutt Encounter at Branch Hill, May 25, 1955, pp.138-145
The Branch Hill encounter was unknown, prior to August 1956, beyond the actual participants. The story came to light during [an] interview with Loveland Police Chief John K. Fritz on August 31. [...] He could not remember the exact date but believed it had been in March or April, 1955. [...]

Chief Fritz [said] that this was the kind of report that "would make your hair stand on end." [...] He recounted how he had been awakened by someone pounding on his front door about four o'clock in the morning. Upon answering, he found a somewhat shaken man named Robert Hunnicutt standing in the doorway. "He looked as if he'd seen a ghost," Fritz said. Hunnicutt, a short-order chef in a newly-opened Loveland area restaurant, told the police chief that while he was driving northeast through Branch Hill (in Symmes Township) on the Madeira-Loveland Pike, he had seen a group of "strange little men" along the side of the road with "their backs to the bushes." Curious, he had stopped the car and gotten out. According to Fritz, the witness claimed he had seen "fire coming out of their hands," and that a "terrible odor" permeated the place. When Hunnicutt realized he was looking at something quite out of the ordinary he became frightened; jumping back into his car, he had driven directly to the police chief's home.

Fritz, who knew Hunnicutt, found it difficult to believe the story "straight out," but he said there was no question in his mind that Hunnicutt wa "scared to death... The man had seen something, and there's no argument to that." By getting close enough to smell his breath, Fritz was satisfied that there was no question of Hunnicutt's having been drinking. He agreed to check the area and told Hunnicutt to go on home.

Chief Fritz dressed, got his gun and loaded his camera, and drove to the area indicated by Hunnicutt. He made four or five passes along the road looking for signs of something unusual but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Alone, with the details of Hunnicutt's strange story fresh in his mind, Fritz acknowledged that he indeed "felt peculiar." He also felt, he said, like he might be "the biggest fool in Loveland."

Asked why he had taken a camera, Fritz said he wanted evidence in the form of photographs if he came upon anything unusual. Asked what he would have done had he encountered the strange beings, he replied that he would have gotten out of his car "and tried to talk to them, to find out where they come from." He added that "someone has to do it sooner or later."

While Hunnicutt had not reported seeing a UFO, Chief Fritz said that there had been a sighting earlier that same night by members of the local GOC. The UFO sighting was later reported in the local newspaper, the Loveland Herald, but Fritz did not have a copy of the press story. This proved an important reference, however, serving to date Hunnicutt's encounter precisely. Chief Fritz willingly provided the current address of the witness who, at the time of the enquiry, resided in Avondale. He was contacted immediately upon [the writer's] return from Loveland, and agreed to meet with the Stringfields and [the writer] on the following evening.

Hunnicutt's Strange Story
At the time of [the] interview on September 1, 1956, Robert Hunnicutt was the maitre d' of a restaurant in downtown Cincinnati. [...] Hunnicutt was cooperative in responding to [the interviewers'] many questions, and impressed [the interviewers] with the cautious manner in which he reconstructed all those details he could accurately recall.

As did Chief Fritz, Hunnicutt placed the date in either March or April, 1955. He was returning home from work on that morning at about 3.30am, driving north on the Madeira-Loveland Pike, in the vicinity of the Hopewell Road at Branch Hill in Symmes Township. As he topped a rise in the road and was coming down a slight grade, his car lights fell on what he first thought were three men kneeling down in the grass on the right side of the road, just inside the berm.

"My first impression," he told us, "was that there were three crazy guys praying by the side of the road." Hunnicutt brought his car to a stop "to see what gives," with the car lights illuminating the scene. It was at this point that he realized these were not three kneeling men: a sense of something quite extraordinary came over him as he saw that the figures before him were not even men.

The figures were short, about three and a half feet in height, and they stood in a roughly triangular position facing the opposite side of the road. One was forward and closer to the shoulder, and to the witness, while the other two stood in flank positions to the rear. The forward figure held his arms a foot or so above his head and it appeared to Hunnicutt as though he were holding a rod, or a chain, in this upraised position. [...] Sparks, blue-white in color and two or three at a time, were seen jumping back and forth from one hand to the other, just above and below the "rod." It was Hunnicutt's impression that the beings were concentrating on some spot directly across the road, although he could see nothing unusual in the woods to the west of the Pike.

As Hunnicutt got out of the left side of his car, the forward figure lowered his arms and near his feet appeared to release whatever he had been holding. To the witness, "it looked as if he tied it around his ankles." Then, as Hunnicutt stood by the left side of the car, all three figures simultaneously turned slightly toward their left so that they now face the witness. Motionless, and without sound or change of expression, they stared directly at him. In the car lights Hunnicutt was able to observe a number of details.

This most extraordinary trio was made up of three humanoid figures of a greyish color -- approximately the same shade of grey for their heads as for their "garments." "Fairly ugly" were the words Hunnicutt used to describe them. A large, straight mouth, without any apparent lip muscles, crossed nearly the entire lower portion of their faces -- an effect which reminded the witness of a frog. The nose was indistinct, with no unusual feature that the witness could discern. The eyes seemed to be more or less normal, except that no eyebrows could be seen. The pate was bald and appeared to have rolls of fat running horizontally across the top, rather like the corregated effect of a doll's painted-on hair -- except that there was no difference in color.

The most remarkable feature was the upper torso: the chest was decidedly lopsided. On the right side it swelled out in an unusually large bulge that began under the armpit and extended down to the waist, giving the figures a markedly asymmetrical appearance. The arms seemed to be of uneven length, the right being longer than the left, as though to accommodate this unusual feature. (The lopsided torse seems to be a detail unique among humanoid reports; no other example has yet been found that matches it.) Hunnicutt saw nothing unusual about the hands, although he could not say how many fingers they had.

If the beings wore garments above their waists, they were tight-fitting and of the same grey color as the rest of the body. There was no line of demarcation to be detected between a garment and the skin itself. Below the waist, however, there seemed to be a loose-fitting garment of the same grey color, but Hinnicutt was unable to recall any details other than that the hips and waist appeared to be "heavy." He could see no feet, but the figures stood in six-inch high grass.

Hunnicutt's car was parked about 10 feet away from the humanoids. After standing next to the left-hand door for perhaps a minute or a minute and a half, his curiosity overcame whatever fear he may have felt and he started to walk around the left front of the car towards the beings. As he reached the front fender, the little humanoids simultaneously moved slightly forward and toward the witness -- a "peculiar" motion that was quite "definite and graceful." Hunnicutt had the distinct impression that he should approach no closer -- he said that no words were needed to convey this message. He stood be the front fender for perhaps two or three minutes more, too amazed by this bizarre spectacle to be frightened.

Hunnicutt said that when he finally left, it was merely to get someone else to see these outlandish figures. Getting back into his car, he was suddenly aware of an extremely strong and penetrating odor; it was most noticeable as he drove off. He compared it to a combination of "fresh-cut alfalfa, with a slight trace of almonds." Only as he drove away, past these three grotesques, did the frightening implications of what he had seen begin to sink in. Although it was nearly four o'clock in the morning, he drove directly to the home of Loveland Police Chief John K. Fritz.

Hunnicutt said he had the impression that he may have intruded upon some kind of an "operation." Asked to explain, he said that when he realized the figures weren't praying, he got the distinct feeling that the forward figure was using the implement in his hands as a signal to someone, or some thing, in the woods on the opposite side of the road, although he could see nothing in the darkness along this sparsely settled section of Branch Hill.

Regarding the odor, Hunnicutt said that several months later (in July or August), he was driving along the same road with a girl friend late at night. When he passed the site of his earlier encounter, both he and the girl noticed the same strong odor he had smelled before. He stopped the car, looked around and seeing nothing unusual, drove on.

Hunnicutt also confirmed that there had been a UFO sighting at the Loveland GOC post earlier on the same night he encountered the "little men." He said that an account of this observation had been published in the next edition of the local paper.
 
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SimonBurchell said:
OK, been meaning to post this here for a while, because it is utterly bizarre, and gave me the creeps for a month when walking home from work through a patch of woodland during the dark winter evenings. Culled from Close Encounters at Kelly and others of 1955 by Isabel Davis and Ted Bloecher, original published in March 1978 by CUFOS. Apologies for the long post, but I don't think this encounter is very wll known, so have copied at length. American spelling, as in the original:

Chapter VII, The Hunnicutt Encounter at Branch Hill, May 25, 1955, pp.138-145
The Branch Hill encounter was unknown, prior to August 1956, beyond the actual participants. The story came to light during [an] interview with Loveland Police Chief John K. Fritz on August 31. [...] He could not remember the exact date but believed it had been in March or April, 1955. [...]

Chief Fritz [said] that this was the kind of report that "would make your hair stand on end." [...] He recounted how he had been awakened by someone pounding on his front door about four o'clock in the morning. Upon answering, he found a somewhat shaken man named Robert Hunnicutt standing in the doorway. "He looked as if he'd seen a ghost," Fritz said. Hunnicutt, a short-order chef in a newly-opened Loveland area restaurant, told the police chief that while he was driving northeast through Branch Hill (in Symmes Township) on the Madeira-Loveland Pike, he had seen a group of "strange little men" along the side of the road with "their backs to the bushes." Curious, he had stopped the car and gotten out. According to Fritz, the witness claimed he had seen "fire coming out of their hands," and that a "terrible odor" permeated the place. When Hunnicutt realized he was looking at something quite out of the ordinary he became frightened; jumping back into his car, he had driven directly to the police chief's home.

Fritz, who knew Hunnicutt, found it difficult to believe the story "straight out," but he said there was no question in his mind that Hunnicutt wa "scared to death... The man had seen something, and there's no argument to that." By getting close enough to smell his breath, Fritz was satisfied that there was no question of Hunnicutt's having been drinking. He agreed to check the area and told Hunnicutt to go on home.

Chief Fritz dressed, got his gun and loaded his camera, and drove to the area indicated by Hunnicutt. He made four or five passes along the road looking for signs of something unusual but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Alone, with the details of Hunnicutt's strange story fresh in his mind, Fritz acknowledged that he indeed "felt peculiar." He also felt, he said, like he might be "the biggest fool in Loveland."

Asked why he had taken a camera, Fritz said he wanted evidence in the form of photographs if he came upon anything unusual. Asked what he would have done had he encountered the strange beings, he replied that he would have gotten out of his car "and tried to talk to them, to find out where they come from." He added that "someone has to do it sooner or later."

While Hunnicutt had not reported seeing a UFO, Chief Fritz said that there had been a sighting earlier that same night by members of the local GOC. The UFO sighting was later reported in the local newspaper, the Loveland Herald, but Fritz did not have a copy of the press story. This proved an important reference, however, serving to date Hunnicutt's encounter precisely. Chief Fritz willingly provided the current address of the witness who, at the time of the enquiry, resided in Avondale. He was contacted immediately upon [the writer's] return from Loveland, and agreed to meet with the Stringfields and [the writer] on the following evening.

Hunnicutt's Strange Story
At the time of [the] interview on September 1, 1956, Robert Hunnicutt was the maitre d' of a restaurant in downtown Cincinnati. [...] Hunnicutt was cooperative in responding to [the interviewers'] many questions, and impressed [the interviewers] with the cautious manner in which he reconstructed all those details he could accurately recall.

As did Chief Fritz, Hunnicutt placed the date in either March or April, 1955. He was returning home from work on that morning at about 3.30am, driving north on the Madeira-Loveland Pike, in the vicinity of the Hopewell Road at Branch Hill in Symmes Township. As he topped a rise in the road and was coming down a slight grade, his car lights fell on what he first thought were three men kneeling down in the grass on the right side of the road, just inside the berm.

"My first impression," he told us, "was that there were three crazy guys praying by the side of the road." Hunnicutt brought his car to a stop "to see what gives," with the car lights illuminating the scene. It was at this point that he realized these were not three kneeling men: a sense of something quite extraordinary came over him as he saw that the figures before him were not even men.

The figures were short, about three and a half feet in height, and they stood in a roughly triangular position facing the opposite side of the road. One was forward and closer to the shoulder, and to the witness, while the other two stood in flank positions to the rear. The forward figure held his arms a foot or so above his head and it appeared to Hunnicutt as though he were holding a rod, or a chain, in this upraised position. [...] Sparks, blue-white in color and two or three at a time, were seen jumping back and forth from one hand to the other, just above and below the "rod." It was Hunnicutt's impression that the beings were concentrating on some spot directly across the road, although he could see nothing unusual in the woods to the west of the Pike.

As Hunnicutt got out of the left side of his car, the forward figure lowered his arms and near his feet appeared to release whatever he had been holding. To the witness, "it looked as if he tied it around his ankles." Then, as Hunnicutt stood by the left side of the car, all three figures simultaneously turned slightly toward their left so that they now face the witness. Motionless, and without sound or change of expression, they stared directly at him. In the car lights Hunnicutt was able to observe a number of details.

This most extraordinary trio was made up of three humanoid figures of a greyish color -- approximately the same shade of grey for their heads as for their "garments." "Fairly ugly" were the words Hunnicutt used to describe them. A large, straight mouth, without any apparent lip muscles, crossed nearly the entire lower portion of their faces -- an effect which reminded the witness of a frog. The nose was indistinct, with no unusual feature that the witness could discern. The eyes seemed to be more or less normal, except that no eyebrows could be seen. The pate was bald and appeared to have rolls of fat running horizontally across the top, rather like the corregated effect of a doll's painted-on hair -- except that there was no difference in color.

The most remarkable feature was the upper torso: the chest was decidedly lopsided. On the right side it swelled out in an unusually large bulge that began under the armpit and extended down to the waist, giving the figures a markedly asymmetrical appearance. The arms seemed to be of uneven length, the right being longer than the left, as though to accommodate this unusual feature. (The lopsided torse seems to be a detail unique among humanoid reports; no other example has yet been found that matches it.) Hunnicutt saw nothing unusual about the hands, although he could not say how many fingers they had.

If the beings wore garments above their waists, they were tight-fitting and of the same grey color as the rest of the body. There was no line of demarcation to be detected between a garment and the skin itself. Below the waist, however, there seemed to be a loose-fitting garment of the same grey color, but Hinnicutt was unable to recall any details other than that the hips and waist appeared to be "heavy." He could see no feet, but the figures stood in six-inch high grass.

Hunnicutt's car was parked about 10 feet away from the humanoids. After standing next to the left-hand door for perhaps a minute or a minute and a half, his curiosity overcame whatever fear he may have felt and he started to walk around the left front of the car towards the beings. As he reached the front fender, the little humanoids simultaneously moved slightly forward and toward the witness -- a "peculiar" motion that was quite "definite and graceful." Hunnicutt had the distinct impression that he should approach no closer -- he said that no words were needed to convey this message. He stood be the front fender for perhaps two or three minutes more, too amazed by this bizarre spectacle to be frightened.

Hunnicutt said that when he finally left, it was merely to get someone else to see these outlandish figures. Getting back into his car, he was suddenly aware of an extremely strong and penetrating odor; it was most noticeable as he drove off. He compared it to a combination of "fresh-cut alfalfa, with a slight trace of almonds." Only as he drove away, past these three grotesques, did the frightening implications of what he had seen begin to sink in. Although it was nearly four o'clock in the morning, he drove directly to the home of Loveland Police Chief John K. Fritz.

Hunnicutt said he had the impression that he may have intruded upon some kind of an "operation." Asked to explain, he said that when he realized the figures weren't praying, he got the distinct feeling that the forward figure was using the implement in his hands as a signal to someone, or some thing, in the woods on the opposite side of the road, although he could see nothing in the darkness along this sparsely settled section of Branch Hill.

Regarding the odor, Hunnicutt said that several months later (in July or August), he was driving along the same road with a girl friend late at night. When he passed the site of his earlier encounter, both he and the girl noticed the same strong odor he had smelled before. He stopped the car, looked around and seeing nothing unusual, drove on.

Hunnicutt also confirmed that there had been a UFO sighting at the Loveland GOC post earlier on the same night he encountered the "little men." He said that an account of this observation had been published in the next edition of the local paper.
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Illustration from the above report:
20220212_150613.jpg
 
SimonBurchell said:
Illustration from the above report:
View attachment 51957
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Thanks for going to such trouble to provide info on this case. When mention was made of flames or sparks coming from the hands of (one of?) the entities I thought immediately of the Felixstowe fire demon story. In previous centuries these would definitely be described as the Little People, especially as the witness didn't see any craft. Interesting that the witness felt no fear during the encounter.
 
I think this is one of the incidents sometimes described under the general title of the "Loveland Frog" (partly to try and link it to another incident in the 1970s). There are a few versions circulating with varying details.
 
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