Gobbler Rock and Other Unexplained Phenomena
By James Donahue
It doesn’t take a lot of searching to find them . . . those news clippings about strange and unexplained phenomena that defy all of the rules that we think are in place for the normal operation of our world.
A four-hundred-pound boulder resting high in the fork of a chestnut oak tree in Yellowwood State Forest, near Unionville, Indiana, is no more. Either the mere weight of the rock, a wind storm, or just old age caused the tree to fall bringing the rock it held crashing with it to the ground. For many years Gobbler’s Rock, so-called because a turkey hunter found it, was a popular tourist attraction. People had to hike a ways through the woods to see it, but there it was, a large four-foot-wide rock wedged about thirty feet up in the tree. The mystery, of course, was whether it was hoisted there by pranksters using a crane, or if the tree grew up under it. Whatever happened, its existence defied logic and drew curio-seekers.
There also was a mysterious tree fall in the Patagonian Forest in Argentina. All of the trees in a space measuring about the size of an average city block in the forest near Ushuaia were found uprooted and lying in a north to south direction. The site brings to mind the Tunguska event of 1908 in remote northern regions of Siberia, except on a much smaller scale. Residents of the area talk of having seen fireballs plunging from the sky days before the toppled trees were noticed. Part of the Patagonian mystery lies in the fact that none of the trees appear burned. Also at the northern part of the site, the tree trunks were severed about six or seven meters from the ground, suggesting that something very large struck the trees with a force strong enough to snap the trunks and knock them all flat. But what was it? There is no sign of wreckage of an aircraft, and no debris from a falling meteor. There is just that section of trees lying flattened, and all lying in the same direction. Suggestions of a strange wind or tornado have been mostly ruled out because of the way the trees fell.
A homeowner in Jasper Place, New Zealand, complained about a mysterious brown substance that peppered his two-story house during the dark of night. Karl Blumenthal told the local newspaper in 2007 that a hard rain and hail storm in the morning failed to wash it away. He said it smelled pretty bad. A news reporter visited the site and said that indeed, the house was covered in brown spots of different sizes on the roof, front windows and a fence in the back yard. The general consensus was that a large flock of birds did the deed, but Blumenthal wasn’t that convinced. Other thought was that it was something that dropped out of an aircraft passing overhead. But airline officials insist that planes are sealed and don’t just drop waste while in flight. Whatever the stuff was, it was removed later that week with the help of a high pressure water hose.
People in northeast Hamilton, Ontario, brought a complaint of a thick black soot that was blackening their homes and yards. The local Ministry of the Environment said it was unable to track the source of the strange material that seemed to fall down on the community about every other day for several weeks in a row. Local industry reported no emission events that would be causing such a substance to rain down on the neighborhood. One news story said the soot blackened lawn furniture, awnings and swimming pools could be found in a large arc pattern. Resident Rick Delaplante said the material seemed to come back after he finished cleaning up after the last “smear.” He said the material was very hard to clean because “when you wipe at it, it smears all over. It spreads like crazy.”
In January, 2000, at least fifteen giant basketball-size blocks of ice dropped from cloudless skies over a large area of Spain during a ten-day period. The blocks crushed car hoods, fell through rooftops and even the windshield of a car. The balls weighed up to eight pounds. The following summer, a Reuters News reporter said he witnessed a tapered object shaped like the bell of a trumpet dropping out of the sky near West Chester, Pennsylvania. He said he saw colors from yellow on the flared end, which approached the ground, to green in the tapering midsection, and rust-red at the top. Investigators found no trace of the object, but a cornfield at that site was flattened.
Then there was the strange incident on February 21, 2004 when electronic door locking devices in an estimated one thousand cars, trucks and vans malfunctioned at about the same time in Las Vegas, Nevada. Police, fire departments, locksmiths, tow truck operators and car dealerships were besieged with calls from stranded motorists who could not get into their vehicles.
In Wales, a deep twenty-meter-long gash in the side of a mountain recently appeared and natives of the area cannot explain how it happened. It is said that a deep cut gorge, located about twenty-five hundred feet high between Moel Eilio and Snowdon, starts in the heart of a cluster of smashed rock and continues down-hill to end in a boggy ground near a fence. No trace of a strike by a meteor or any other large object has been found.
There was the recent odd discovery of a piranha, with a full set of teeth, on the deck of a moored vessel in the Thames River in Dagenham, East London. A native to the Amazon River in South America, no one could come up with an acceptable theory as to how it got transported so far out of its normal habitat, or how it got on the deck. One writer suggested that it must have "fallen out of the sky."
There was a story from Merida, Mexico, in the Yucatan Peninsula about a beast dubbed the "wolfwoman" that was the subject of a mass hunt by police and farmers with guns. The creature was described by farmers who saw it as a hairy female that walked on two legs and had glowing red eyes. It was apparently feeding on chickens and ducks on the various farms.
Stories like these make it appear as if some unseen power is constantly throwing curve balls into the game, trying to force people to take a second look at reality.
By James Donahue
It doesn’t take a lot of searching to find them . . . those news clippings about strange and unexplained phenomena that defy all of the rules that we think are in place for the normal operation of our world.
A four-hundred-pound boulder resting high in the fork of a chestnut oak tree in Yellowwood State Forest, near Unionville, Indiana, is no more. Either the mere weight of the rock, a wind storm, or just old age caused the tree to fall bringing the rock it held crashing with it to the ground. For many years Gobbler’s Rock, so-called because a turkey hunter found it, was a popular tourist attraction. People had to hike a ways through the woods to see it, but there it was, a large four-foot-wide rock wedged about thirty feet up in the tree. The mystery, of course, was whether it was hoisted there by pranksters using a crane, or if the tree grew up under it. Whatever happened, its existence defied logic and drew curio-seekers.
There also was a mysterious tree fall in the Patagonian Forest in Argentina. All of the trees in a space measuring about the size of an average city block in the forest near Ushuaia were found uprooted and lying in a north to south direction. The site brings to mind the Tunguska event of 1908 in remote northern regions of Siberia, except on a much smaller scale. Residents of the area talk of having seen fireballs plunging from the sky days before the toppled trees were noticed. Part of the Patagonian mystery lies in the fact that none of the trees appear burned. Also at the northern part of the site, the tree trunks were severed about six or seven meters from the ground, suggesting that something very large struck the trees with a force strong enough to snap the trunks and knock them all flat. But what was it? There is no sign of wreckage of an aircraft, and no debris from a falling meteor. There is just that section of trees lying flattened, and all lying in the same direction. Suggestions of a strange wind or tornado have been mostly ruled out because of the way the trees fell.
A homeowner in Jasper Place, New Zealand, complained about a mysterious brown substance that peppered his two-story house during the dark of night. Karl Blumenthal told the local newspaper in 2007 that a hard rain and hail storm in the morning failed to wash it away. He said it smelled pretty bad. A news reporter visited the site and said that indeed, the house was covered in brown spots of different sizes on the roof, front windows and a fence in the back yard. The general consensus was that a large flock of birds did the deed, but Blumenthal wasn’t that convinced. Other thought was that it was something that dropped out of an aircraft passing overhead. But airline officials insist that planes are sealed and don’t just drop waste while in flight. Whatever the stuff was, it was removed later that week with the help of a high pressure water hose.
People in northeast Hamilton, Ontario, brought a complaint of a thick black soot that was blackening their homes and yards. The local Ministry of the Environment said it was unable to track the source of the strange material that seemed to fall down on the community about every other day for several weeks in a row. Local industry reported no emission events that would be causing such a substance to rain down on the neighborhood. One news story said the soot blackened lawn furniture, awnings and swimming pools could be found in a large arc pattern. Resident Rick Delaplante said the material seemed to come back after he finished cleaning up after the last “smear.” He said the material was very hard to clean because “when you wipe at it, it smears all over. It spreads like crazy.”
In January, 2000, at least fifteen giant basketball-size blocks of ice dropped from cloudless skies over a large area of Spain during a ten-day period. The blocks crushed car hoods, fell through rooftops and even the windshield of a car. The balls weighed up to eight pounds. The following summer, a Reuters News reporter said he witnessed a tapered object shaped like the bell of a trumpet dropping out of the sky near West Chester, Pennsylvania. He said he saw colors from yellow on the flared end, which approached the ground, to green in the tapering midsection, and rust-red at the top. Investigators found no trace of the object, but a cornfield at that site was flattened.
Then there was the strange incident on February 21, 2004 when electronic door locking devices in an estimated one thousand cars, trucks and vans malfunctioned at about the same time in Las Vegas, Nevada. Police, fire departments, locksmiths, tow truck operators and car dealerships were besieged with calls from stranded motorists who could not get into their vehicles.
In Wales, a deep twenty-meter-long gash in the side of a mountain recently appeared and natives of the area cannot explain how it happened. It is said that a deep cut gorge, located about twenty-five hundred feet high between Moel Eilio and Snowdon, starts in the heart of a cluster of smashed rock and continues down-hill to end in a boggy ground near a fence. No trace of a strike by a meteor or any other large object has been found.
There was the recent odd discovery of a piranha, with a full set of teeth, on the deck of a moored vessel in the Thames River in Dagenham, East London. A native to the Amazon River in South America, no one could come up with an acceptable theory as to how it got transported so far out of its normal habitat, or how it got on the deck. One writer suggested that it must have "fallen out of the sky."
There was a story from Merida, Mexico, in the Yucatan Peninsula about a beast dubbed the "wolfwoman" that was the subject of a mass hunt by police and farmers with guns. The creature was described by farmers who saw it as a hairy female that walked on two legs and had glowing red eyes. It was apparently feeding on chickens and ducks on the various farms.
Stories like these make it appear as if some unseen power is constantly throwing curve balls into the game, trying to force people to take a second look at reality.