Unexplained! Strange Sightings, Incredible Occurrences, and Puzzling Physical Phenomena

Jerome Clark’s book “Unexplained! Strange Sightings, Incredible Occurrences, and Puzzling Physical Phenomena” is a tome of Fortean phenomena. A wild trip down the high strange, putting the pedal to the metal, through the roads of oblivion and creation. The book chronicles paranormal encounters from Sasquatch to aliens to glimpses of living dinosaurs in our precious now moment. Being a life long resident of the weird and strange through my radio show The Church of Mabus. It is always a pleasure to get fresh perspectives and that is exactly what Jerome Clark does in this interview. I hope you will enjoy it.

1. What was the inspiration behind writing Unexplained! Strange Sightings, Incredible Occurrences, and Puzzling Physical Phenomena?

JC: It was the result of a lifetime’s worth of research into and reflection on various kinds of anomalous occurrences beyond UFOs. To most persons who know of my work, I’m associated with ufology — the mutli-volume UFO Encyclopedia series cemented that — but ever since I read Charles Fort when I was a kid, I’ve been intrigued by Fortean phenomena, which are physical/semi-physical anomalies as opposed to paranormal phenomena such as ESP, psychokinesis, ghosts, and survival after death. For some reason the latter never interested me as much as strange creatures, falls from the sky, ghost lights, and the like.

2. On the back cover it says Unexplained! is an award winning exposition of the strange the mysterious. What awards has it won?

JC: A previous edition of Unexplained! (published in 1999) won the Benjamin Franklin Award of the Publishers Marketing Association as an outstanding title in the Science/Environment category.

3. What can you tell us of your background with the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies?

JC: When I lived in the Chicago area and worked on the editorial staff at Fate magazine, I hung out with CUFOS personnel. I knew Allen Hynek, former Project Blue Book scientific advisor and founder of CUFOS. Allan Hendry, the organization’s fulltime investigator, was a friend. Eventually, I was asked to join the board and to assume editorship of CUFOS’ International UFO Reporter. Though IUR ceased print publication earlier this year, I am still associated with CUFOS. Its cautious, considered, scientifically based approach to the UFO phenomenon is one I feel comfortable with in a way that I haven’t with any of the other major ufology groups.

4. I’d like to go into some topics of the book now. What is your perspective on the flying humanoids? I’ve heard everything from people with jetpacks to evil witches. What do you think?

JC: Some of these reports, though not all, appear to be associated with UFOs. If that’s so, it means we can classify them as close encounters of the third kind. On the other hand, that may or may not mean anything. I think of these things as experience anomalies — in other words, experiences it is possible to have but whose larger significance, if any, is an open question. It may be that the content of experience anomalies is less significant than the phenomenological context that makes extraordinary perceptions occur.

5. Have you always had an interest in UFOs and the paranormal? And if so what sparked this initally in your life?

JC: My interest in the paranormal is slight — not nonexistent, but not a major focus of my life. On the other hand, I have been intrigued by anomalies, also known as Fortean phenomena, which hint at unknown aspects of the natural world and the experiential realm.

6. What do you think about the living dinosaurs and pterodactyl stories? Actual creatures who survived the extinction of dinosaurs or glimpses from the now moment into the past? Or something else?

JC: I am reasonably certain, though I’d be glad to be wrong about this, that dinosaurs went extinct more than 60 million years ago. Of course, if in the long-shot chance any survive, they are in extremely remote locations where human beings can’t bother them. Still, the evidence for survival in the physical sense is slight, which doesn’t mean some of the reports, whatever they’re about, aren’t interesting and puzzling. I am especially struck by the ropens — described as resembling pterosaurs — of Papua New Guinea and surrounding islands. Every once in a while, I come upon a series of observations that strike me as offering some kind of potential breakthrough — maybe a body and conclusive proof, in other words. It will be interesting to watch how the reopen story develops.

7. What are some of your favorites in the book regarding the Unexplained experiences wise?

JC: Some of my favorite chapters are (in the Mysteries section) Living Dinosaurs, Pterosaur Sightings, Thylacines, and Yowie, (in Curosities) Belled Buzzard, Hoop Snakes, Mad Gassers, and Merbeings, and (in Fables) Cottingley Fairy Photographs, Stomach Snakes, and Wahhoo. But everything in the book interested — and interests — me on some level. As I remark in the front matter, the one criterion for inclusion was that the subject had to engage my interest. A significant amount of material is appearing between book covers for the first time, and even veteran readers of anomalies literature are going to be surprised (and I hope pleased) by what they’re encountering.

8. I am curious to your views on bigfoot in your hairy bipeds section you go into this. So what exactly do you think Bigfoot is? A lot of hype on it being wild beings or lost tribes of neanderthals to them being aliens. Your feelings on bigfoot?

JC: My impression is that the Sasquatch of the Pacific Northwest — a complicated matter that I decided for time and space reasons not to cover in the new edition (besides, it’s the subject of a whole lot of books easily obtainable elsewhere) — is the one anomalous phenomenon most likely to be validated in the reasonably near future, probably as a heretofore-unknown great ape. The scientific work done on this particular question is quite astonishing and productive, and it is likely going to produce solid answers before long.

I separate Sasquatch, which to all appears is a zoological animal in the normal sense of the phrase, from what I call Hairy Bipeds, which are descendants of the Wild Man tradition. They’re reported just about everywhere on the North American continent and around the planet. Whatever they are or are not, they are residents of the Goblin Universe, not of consensus reality. That doesn’t mean they’re simply imaginary, of course. The experiences people report of them are deeply strange and probably impossible to explain within current knowledge. But their relationship to Sasquatch, in my opinion, is more apparent than real.

9. What is Jerome Clark up to in the future book wise and projects wise?

JC: I think I’m going to see how Unexplained! does before I contemplate embarking on another book. I’ve written more than 20 books by now, and I’m proud of most (especially those written over the past two decades), but the work, while fascinating, is exhausting. I am extremely pleased with the newly released third edition of Unexplained! turned out. I just hope it finds an audience — always the author’s concern after the book is finally written and turned out into the world.

Book description:

Delivering the possible truths of more than 200 unexplained mysteries, this collection applies an authoritative, intelligent, and reasoned examination of strange artifacts and events that have perplexed scientists. It explores a wide range of phenomena, including cattle mutilations, crop circles, spontaneous human combustion, Martian lore, Roswell, Loch Ness, weather phenomena, fairies, Bigfoot, the Bermuda Triangle, living dinosaurs, ghosts, UFOs, pterodactyl sightings, flying humanoids, hollow earth, and other absorbing puzzles. Along the way, readers will learn of hoaxes, witness the creation of various modern myths, and learn of frightening personal accounts and startling historical documents. Documenting the evidence and hearing witnesses out, Jerome Clark brings an engaging narrative to the stories, objectively presents their many possible explanations, and lets the reader make his or her own judgment in this one-of-a-kind book.

About the Author

Jerome Clark is the prize-winning author of more than a dozen books, including Hidden Realms, Lost Civilizations, and Beings from Other Worlds; Strange Skies: Pilot Encounters with UFOs; the multivolume UFO Encyclopedia; and Unnatural Phenomena. He serves on the board of the J. Allen Center for UFO Studies and is the coeditor of its magazine, International UFO Reporter. In 2008 he received the Dinsdale Award given by the Society of Scientific Exploration for significant contributions to the expansion of human understanding through the study of unexplained phenomena. He lives in Canby, Minnesota.

Purchase this book and many other greats through Visible Ink Press.

Jeffery Pritchett is the host of The Church Of Mabus Show bringing you high strange stories from professionals in the carousel of fields surrounding the paranormal.