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 What creatures are lurking beneath Antarctica’s ice sheet? Today, I was reading about how Russian scientists will be exploring an icebound lake located over two miles beneath Antarctica’s frozen surface. The lake is not only filled with fresh water that’s millions of years old, but it’s also filled with untouched information for scientists to examine. “It’s like exploring an alien planet where no one has been before. We don’t know what we’ll find,” said Valery Lukin of Russia’s Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI) in St. Petersburg.
British and United States explorers are also out to study other sub-glacial lakes in the area. Today there are roughly 145 of these sub-glacial lakes in Antarctica for scientists to explore. Two factors work together to ensure the water doesn’t freeze in these lakes. One is that the Antarctic ice sheets covering these lakes contain the earth’s geothermal heat and that’s what keeps the lakes from freezing. The other factor is the ice encasing the lake exerts enormous pressure on the water, which acts to lower the freezing point.
With these lakes being one of the last areas of unexplored territory on the planet it will be truly exciting to see what mysterious new life forms they uncover. Not to mention all the data scientists will have that may help to trace back previous life. My imagination is working on all the possibilities.
I think this scientific discovery has all the makings of a great Sci-Fi movie. The possibilities range from exposing some form of ancient alien spores to unleashing a hoard of prehistoric cryptid beasts. However, I think this might only happen in the movies.
Imaginings aside, this discovery does have the potential to lead to some serious scientific breakthroughs that could cause us to reassess some of the things we always assumed were fact. Believe It Tour will be keeping an eye on the latest developments for you.
 To pay homage to this classic UFO and Alien sighting I have added a new drawing to our set of Believe It Tour Characters. Click the photo to order. It was last October, while driving home from the Texas Bigfoot Conference, that we decided to make a stop in Flatwoods, which is located in Braxton County, West Virginia. That’s right we stopped to see the home of the legendary Green Monster or, perhaps better known as, the Flatwoods Monster.
It was way back in September of 1952 that the legend started and changed the face of this small town forever. On a late summer evening there was a reported sighting of an alien type creature that was 10 feet tall with a blood-red face, fiery eyes, and green lizard-like skin.
Was I expecting to come across such a sight myself? I didn’t think it was likely, but anything is possible. However, that made me question what it is that drives us to want to go out of our way to catch a glimpse of where something reportedly took place so many years ago. After I asked myself why I stopped in Flatwoods I didn’t have just one answer.
The explorer in me just enjoyed seeing something new, but the investigator in me wanted to grasp what the area was like to better understand the reports. However, the kid in me just wanted to be a little scared at the idea of the 10 foot tall creature that once stood there!
 UFO? On July 22, 2009, Chinese scientists and students captured on film something mysterious flying in the skies over China during the recent solar eclipse. From the few photographs being released it’s fairly safe to say it wasn’t a bird, plane, or even Superman.
Scientists from the Purple Mountain Observatory in Nanjing are puzzled over what they saw and the resulting images that were obtained by the scientists and students observing the solar eclipse. Researchers will spend the next year analyzing the 40 minutes of footage and numerous photographs to try to determine what the object was. The observatory’s director, Ji Hai-sheng, has stated that scientists will not publically speculate on what the unidentified object might be until they have analyzed all data. The July event was just the latest in a series of unidentified sightings that have been reported in China.
The question remains as to what was seen in China? Was it an anomoly caused by the solar eclipse, a commercial airplane that had an unusal refection due to the solar event, or something truly unidentified that might indicate life exists elsewhere?
Pennsylvania has been a standout location in the cryptozoology world due in large part to the numerous Bigfoot reports over the years. Now the attention is shifting to the extraterrestrial. According to MUFON’s Pennsylvania Branch Director, John Ventre, there has been 138 UFO sightings during this past summer. This is up from the typical average of 36 over that 4 month period.
A majority of the sightings, 77 of the 138, have occurred in the Bucks County area. Is this hot spot of activity a sign of something more believable? Find out at the next Alien Hunter Conference. This MUFON event will be held at Bucks County Community College on January 24, 2009. Topics will include alien abductions, eyewitness accounts and the alien hybrid program.
 BJ Winslow of Dapper Cadaver The Believe It Tour has been out and about again…
I looked up at the sign to make sure I was in the right place as I slowly walked through the double front doors. I looked to my right and saw an electric chair holding a hapless victim. I looked to my left and was assailed by piles of bones and disembodied human and zombie heads. I had officially entered the world of BJ Winslow and his shop, Dapper Cadaver.
I walked through this amazing store past shelves holding fluid filled specimen jars containing interesting bits of people or animals. I passed by alien skeletons, tombstones, the occasional feegee mermaid, vintage autopsy tools, and mutilated bodies covered only in decaying flesh. Normally, this would be considered a gruesome crime scene or something out of a horror movie, but instead it was a testimony to one man’s imagination, intense creativity, and an unwavering commitment to the belief in some things that could exist.
A tall guy with glasses, paint stained hands, and curly hair made his way over to me with a crooked grin. This was BJ, the man behind the vision and a self-described “monster agnostic.” Dapper Cadaver is a mix of realistic body parts and props and oddities like aliens, cryptids, and assorted mutated creatures. With Dapper Cadaver BJ sees a monster trend that started about ten months ago. He said this is evidenced with movies like “Hellboy II” and “The Mummy III.” He also said the fact that Bigfoot hunters recently made it onto CNN was groundbreaking. With a smile he said, “The nation wants there to be proof of Bigfoot.” Around the time the monster trend began, BJ started a blog entitled, Monster Mondays, where he explores different cryptozoology creatures at length and also tackles other creepy topics. You can see his blog athttp://www.dappercadaver.com/blog/horror/monster-mondays.
BJ got his start making props when as a child he repainted his toys, deconstructed other toys that he reconfigured into new ones, and then put some toys into jars he filled with liquid. When asked about his inspiration, BJ replied, “When I grew up I had a cemetery and a forest next door.” As he got older he moved into creating props for carnivals and haunted houses. After doing that for ten years, BJ co-founded Dapper Cadaver three years ago. Dapper Cadaver has provided realistic props to over 475 productions. These range from TV shows like “Bones” and “Law and Order” to movies like “300” and “Pirates of the Caribbean II.” They manufacture most items in-house and have a crew of several artists with specialized backgrounds that produce the props.
To follow BJ’s creative process all you have to do is ask him about feegee mermaids.When he designed his amazing feegee mermaid he envisioned how it could have really evolved while he was creating it. He saw it start as a bat on the island of Fiji that went from land into the water. Its winged body elongated and the lower extremity webbing evolved into a tail, it’s arms became human-like and the webbing moved to the fingers, and it’s sonar adapted to work under water. It was clear his story was the inspiration behind his pseudo-cryptid creation.
When I finally left BJ’s world I found it hard to step back into the reality that was outside of the shop doors. What an amazing gem to discover in Los Angeles. Stop by Dapper Cadaver and say hi to BJ and the crew. You can find them at 5519 Hollywood Blvd. in Los Angeles, CA or on the web at www.dappercadaver.com.
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