Jerome Clark - Unexplained!: Strange Sightings, Incredible Occurrences, and Puzzling Physical Phenomena

J erome Clark is a prize-winning author of the multi-volume UFO Encyclopedia (1990-1998) and other books, including Unnatural Phenomena (2005) and Hidden Realms, Lost Civilizations, and Beings from Other Worlds (Visible Ink Press, 2010). A former editor of Fate magazine, he serves on the board of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies. In June 2008 the Society for Scientific Exploration, an organization of professionals in the physical and social sciences, gave him its Dinsdale Award for significant contributions to the expansion of human understanding through the study of unexplained phenomena which have brought to the general public comprehensive and trustworthy information presented from a sophisticated perspective.

Photograph by Carmen Ronan.

Clark is also a songwriter (Emmylou Harris, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Tom T. Hall, Seldom Scene, Mary Black, and others) and a prolific writer on folk and roots music. He pursues a wide range of interestspolitical, historical, and literaryfrom his home in Minnesota.

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UNEXPLAINED!
Strange Sightings,
Incredible Occurrences,
and Puzzling Physical
Phenomena
3rd Edition

Copyright 2013 by Visible Ink Press

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ISBN 978-1-57859-344-6

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T he first edition of this book appeared in 1993, the second in 1999. With this edition the book enters the twenty-first century in considerably revised, much expanded form. The mass of fresh material that had accumulated over a dozen years rendered the new volume something worth doing. A good deal of what you will read has never appeared between book covers. Some subjectsfor example the curious affair of the Belled Buzzardhave not, as far as I know, been examined comprehensively until now.

This is not an attempt, let me be clear, to represent the broad spectrum of anomalies and other allegedly unexplained events and experiences. Such an effort would require many fat volumes, and it would also cover paranormal phenomenaESP and psychokinesis, apparitions, out-of-body and near-death experienceswhich are, frankly, outside my area of expertise (to the extent that anyone can pretend to have expertise in anomalous matters). Nor does the present volume carry over everything from its previous incarnation. Some things simply didnt seem worth revisiting because I felt I had said all I had to say about them and there were no interesting new developments. Ultimately, what I have kept and what I have added have one element in common: they interest me.

A few chapters and sidebars return more or less intact because I thought they needed to be there to serve as a corrective to persistent misinformation regularly peddled by cable televisions snake-oilish true mystery shows. (My inclination is to think of these as the television equivalent of those ubiquitous unsourced email forwards that peddle bald-faced lies and shameless distortions for the edification of the nive and otherwise readily bamboozled.) In fact, this book is intended, in part anyway, for intelligent persons who have seen those programsa few of which, fairness compels me to state, rise above the generally abysmal leveland who may be looking for something more accurate and substantive. Veterans of anomalies literature, however, will also be exposed to information they havent seen until now.

In that regard, this third edition, in contrast to its predecessors, does not include chapters on UFOs, Sasquatch, and the Loch Ness Monster. Information on these, the most celebrated of all anomalies, exists in abundance, by which I mean one could fill the shelves of a small library with books devoted solely to each. Those who dont know that literature may easily seek it elsewhere. Mostly, I have preferred to concentrate on lesser-known, sometimes entirely obscure, mysteries and curiosities. UFOs show up only in a very few cases exemplifying the most extreme claims associated with the idea of alien visitors (as opposed to the hard evidence of radar/visual cases, physical traces, and the like). Sasquatchs alter ego, the Hairy Biped, to which resemblances to the hirsute giants of the Pacific North west seem more apparent than real, figures in a long, detailed chapter. The Loch Ness Monster is treated in succinct fashion in the chapter on Lake Monsters.