The Paracast Newsletter
March 16, 2025
www.theparacast.com
Discover Amazing Myths and Legends in the Upper Midwest of the U.S. and Cattle Mutilations and Strange Disappearances with Joe Kistner on The Paracast!
The Paracast is released every Sunday and available from our site, https://www.theparacast.com, your favorite podcast app, and the IRN Internet Radio Network. All episodes from 2022 and later now feature better audio and fewer ads. We are also re-releasing some of our most popular classic episodes.
WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU HAVEN'T SIGNED UP FOR THE PARACAST+ YET? PLEASE SUBSCRIBE TO THE PARACAST+ SO YOU CAN SUPPORT THE SHOW AND ENJOY THE ULTIMATE PARACAST EXPERIENCE AT A SPECIAL LOW PRICE! We have another radio show and we’d love for you listen to it. So for a low subscription fee, you will receive access to an exclusive bonus podcast, After The Paracast, plus a special version of The Paracast with all the ads removed, when you join The Paracast+. We also offer a special RSS feed for easy updates of the latest episodes on your device. Episodes for subscribers to The Paracast+ are now released 24 hours earlier. Flash! Take advantage of our lowest rates ever! Act now! It's easier than ever to susbcribe! For the easiest signup ever, please visit: https://www.theparacast.plus
This Week's Episode: Gene and cohost Tim Swartz feature Joe Kistner. He is an author and host of the Shadows of the Midwest podcast, and describes himself as a public servant, writer, dad, legend hunter, and a proud distinguished ruffian. Currently, Joe is working on the book “Minnesota Legend Hunters: A Travelogue,” which he hopes will be released in the summer of 2025. He describes the book as compiling and investigating the strange and unusual people, places, things, and events around Minnesota. The iconography of the American heartland is often made up of rolling fields, hard work, family values, rural communities, and a sense of innocence. For many that truly sums up the whole of their existence. However there is no immunity from darker thoughts that lie at the edge of the light. Join in as we travel into the shadows with those who harbor dark thoughts, and deeds. In this episode, Joe will focus on such controversial topics as cattle mutilations in the upper midwest and the many strange disappearances that remain unsolved.
After The Paracast — Available exclusively to Paracast+subscribers on March 15: Author Joe Kistner continues talking with Gene and cohost Tim Swartz about the topics that fuel his Shadows of the Midwest podcast. He will cover myths and legends from his home state of Minnesota, including UFOs and the reports of the recovery of the skeletons of giants who may have lived in ancient times. Joe also discusses reported cases of the stigmata phenomenon, where wounds and scars and pain erupt on the bodies of some people. He describes himself as a public servant, writer, dad, legend hunter, and a proud distinguished ruffian. Currently, he is working on the book “Minnesota Legend Hunters: A Travelogue,” which he hopes will be released in the summer of 2025. He describes the book as compiling and investigating the strange and unusual people, places, things, and events reported across the state.
Reminder: Please don't forget to visit our famous Paracast Community Forums for the latest news/views/debates on all things paranormal: The Paracast Community Forums. And look for @theparacast on Bluesky Social, Facebook, Threads and X.
Truck Stop Earth
By Tim R. Swartz
Unidentified flying objects have been zipping through the skies of planet Earth as long as there have been people around to watch them. Ancient writings, folklore and religious texts are full of tales of unusual, glowing airships and the weird creatures contained within them, and much like the UFOs, the strange beings inside come in an amazing and prolific range of extraordinary shapes and sizes.
For someone whose only knowledge of UFOs comes from YouTube or other social media, this may seem perplexing. After all, anyone who has watched television or gone to the movies in the last thirty years knows flying saucers are spaceships carrying little gray men from outer space. The gray alien with large black eyes has seemingly supplanted the hundreds of other weird beings reported over the decades by UFO witnesses. However, the gray alien stereotype is a relatively recent addition to the pantheon of "aliens" that have interacted with mankind throughout history.
Gods From Other Worlds
The Philistine deity, Dagon, who was one of the four sons of Anu, the lord of heaven, was said to have a human face and hands, but a portion of his body resembled a fish. Dagon flew down from the sky in a ball of fire and taught mankind the ways of the plough and agriculture.
As well, a history of Mesopotamia written in the third century BC by Berossus, a Babylonian priest, states that ancient man lived in a lawless manner like the beasts of the field. In those days there appeared a creature whose name was Oannes, or Ea meaning the "fish of heaven." Oannes body was like a fish, and under the fish's head he had another head, and connected to the fish's tail, he had feet similar to those of a man.
Oannes taught mankind writing and math, and he is credited by the Sumerians for giving civilization to man. Oannes was said to return to the sea every evening, but when he departed for the last time, he flew up into the sky and returned to the heavens.
Coptic Gnostic texts that were written around the first and second centuries CE contains passages that describe ancient encounters with alien-like beings called the Archons. A passage from The First Apocalypse of James (NHC V, 3) states: "A multitude of Archons may turn on you, thinking they can capture you. And in particular, three of them will seize you, those who pose as toll collectors. Not only do they demand toll, but they take away souls by theft. They are not entirely alien, for they are from the Fallen Sophia, the female divinity who produced them when she brought the human race down from the Source, the realm of the Pre-Existent One. So they are not entirely alien, but they are our kin."
It is interesting to note that the actions of the Gnostic Archons bear a close resemblance to modern reports of UFO abductions, and the mysterious Men-In-Black, who supposedly travel in threes and pose as authority figures.
Space Brothers and Hairy Dwarfs
It was not until the 20th century that unexplained aerial objects received worldwide attention and were given a name, UFOs, or flying saucers. Starting in the late 1940s the first investigators became convinced early on that UFOs were extraterrestrial spacecraft. Not surprisingly, the phenomenon quickly seemed to adapt to this belief system.
It is difficult to resist the siren call of the extraterrestrial hypothesis. Many UFO sightings in the early 1950s reported structured machines that performed amazing aerial maneuvers beyond what conventional, earthly aircraft of the day could do. As well, when the UFOs actually landed, the creatures coming out acted just like what we expected from astronauts from another planet. They wore futuristic looking spacesuits with helmets. They took soil, rock, water, and fauna samples before reentering their craft and zipping away.
Not unexpectedly, the 1950s saw the beginnings of the "contactee movement" when the very human looking “Space Brothers” got tired of simply collecting dirt, and began to actually initiate conversations with the shocked witnesses alongside lonely country roads. From that point, the UFOs stopped being a strange sky phenomenon, and instead became a strange social phenomenon.
The most frequently reported of all the UFO occupant cases are dwarf-like creatures that average three to four feet in height. Their complexion has been described as ranging from dark and swarthy to very pale, often bordering on white, although reddish and bluish skin colors have also been mentioned. One of the more bizarre groups of UFO creatures seen, especially in the 1950's, were animal-like hairy dwarves.
In the early morning hours of November 28, 1954 two truck drivers from Caracas, Venezuela, Jose Ponce, and Gustavo Gonzales were driving to Petare, about fifteen miles away from Caracas. Around 2:00 AM the men found their way blocked by a glowing disc-shaped object about ten feet in diameter, which was hovering about six feet above the street.
Both men got out and walked closer to the object and were approached by what appeared to be a very hairy dwarf-like man. Gonzales impulsively grabbed the creature and lifted him off the ground, but the creature twisted out of the truck driver's grasp and attacked him with its webbed hands and inch-long claws.
Gonzales later told police that he tried to fight back with a knife into the creature's shoulder, but the blade glanced off as if it were made of metal. At this point Jose Ponce panicked and ran to seek help from a nearby police station.
As Gonzales tried to fight off his strange attacker, another hairy little man jumped out of the glowing craft and pointed a small shiny tube at the man. There was a blinding beam of light, and when Gonzales could see again, the creatures were gone and the object was flying away.
Gonzales ran for the police station and showed up a couple of minutes after Ponce. At first police thought the men were drunk or crazy. A doctor was brought in, who determined that both men were in a state of shock and that neither of them had been drinking. Gonzales was treated for a long deep scratch down his left side and later reports said that it eventually healed but left a permanent scar.
They Might Be Giants
On the opposite end of the scale are the UFO giants. Even though the reports about them are not nearly as numerous as the small humanoids, the UFO giants certainly are the most bizarre of the UFO occupants.
The giants are the least humanlike of all reported entities—with sightings describing creatures seven to nine feet tall and an amazing diversity ranging from one-eyed Cyclops, beings with black-faces, bushy black hair, and in some instances, with three unblinking eyes and large, round heads.
One amazing story was the account of a truck driver named Eugenio Douglas who had to fight off three "shiny metal robots" some fifteen to twenty feet tall. This happened in Argentina on October 18, 1963.
Douglas told police that a brilliant white light forced him to drive his truck into a ditch outside of the town of Monte Maix. The light, he said, came from a twenty-five-foot disk parked in the middle of the road.
When he got out of his truck, Douglas was approached by three "indescribable beings" that tried to grab him. He managed to draw his pistol and fired several shots at the giants, who seemed unfazed by the bullets. Douglas managed to get away and run toward town as the saucer lifted off the road and made several passes at him. With each pass, Douglas said he felt "a wave of terrible, suffocating heat." The police examiner later found that Douglas had suffered a number of unusual burns.
These are just a few of the thousands of unusual UFO occupant sightings that have been reported over the years. Many of these strange cases receive little attention because they do not fall within the boundaries that UFO researchers have imposed on what they consider to be acceptable cases.
The incredible variety of UFO occupants should give investigators pause to reconsider the popular theory that UFOs are interplanetary spaceships. Unless planet Earth is some sort of intergalactic truck stop, it is difficult to explain why each UFO occupant sighting tends to be unique. Nevertheless, whatever their sources or origins, one thing is clear; the UFO occupants are as many and diverse as the stars in the heavens.
Tim R. Swartz is an Indiana native and Emmy-Award winning television producer/videographer, and is the author of a number of popular books including The Lost Journals of Nikola Tesla, Gef the Talking Mongoose, and is a contributing writer for such books as, Brad Steiger's Real Monsters, Gruesome Critters, and Beasts from the Darkside, and Real Ghosts, Restless Spirits and Haunted Places. His most recent books, along with author Sean Casteel are Weird Time – Exploring the Mysteries of Time and Space, and Mimics — The Others Among Us.
As a photojournalist, Tim Swartz has traveled extensively and investigated paranormal phenomena and other unusual mysteries in such diverse locations as the Great Pyramid in Egypt to the Great Wall in China. He has worked with major television networks both national and international.
Tim has appeared on the documentary “The Myth of Tesla,” as well as The History Channels programs "Ancient Aliens,” “Evidence," "Ancient Aliens: Declassified,” "The UnXplained,” and the History Channel Latin America series "Contacto Extraterrestre.”
His articles have been published in magazines such as Mysteries, FATE, Strange, Atlantis Rising, UFO Universe, Flying Saucer Review, Renaissance, and Unsolved UFO Reports.
Tim is also the co-host/co-producer of The Paracast with Gene Steinberg at: www.theparacast.com
His website is: www.weirdtimebook.com
Copyright 1999-2025 The Paracast Company. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy: Your personal information is safe with us. We will positively never give out your name and/or e-mail address to anybody else, and that's a promise!
March 16, 2025
www.theparacast.com
Discover Amazing Myths and Legends in the Upper Midwest of the U.S. and Cattle Mutilations and Strange Disappearances with Joe Kistner on The Paracast!
The Paracast is released every Sunday and available from our site, https://www.theparacast.com, your favorite podcast app, and the IRN Internet Radio Network. All episodes from 2022 and later now feature better audio and fewer ads. We are also re-releasing some of our most popular classic episodes.
WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU HAVEN'T SIGNED UP FOR THE PARACAST+ YET? PLEASE SUBSCRIBE TO THE PARACAST+ SO YOU CAN SUPPORT THE SHOW AND ENJOY THE ULTIMATE PARACAST EXPERIENCE AT A SPECIAL LOW PRICE! We have another radio show and we’d love for you listen to it. So for a low subscription fee, you will receive access to an exclusive bonus podcast, After The Paracast, plus a special version of The Paracast with all the ads removed, when you join The Paracast+. We also offer a special RSS feed for easy updates of the latest episodes on your device. Episodes for subscribers to The Paracast+ are now released 24 hours earlier. Flash! Take advantage of our lowest rates ever! Act now! It's easier than ever to susbcribe! For the easiest signup ever, please visit: https://www.theparacast.plus
This Week's Episode: Gene and cohost Tim Swartz feature Joe Kistner. He is an author and host of the Shadows of the Midwest podcast, and describes himself as a public servant, writer, dad, legend hunter, and a proud distinguished ruffian. Currently, Joe is working on the book “Minnesota Legend Hunters: A Travelogue,” which he hopes will be released in the summer of 2025. He describes the book as compiling and investigating the strange and unusual people, places, things, and events around Minnesota. The iconography of the American heartland is often made up of rolling fields, hard work, family values, rural communities, and a sense of innocence. For many that truly sums up the whole of their existence. However there is no immunity from darker thoughts that lie at the edge of the light. Join in as we travel into the shadows with those who harbor dark thoughts, and deeds. In this episode, Joe will focus on such controversial topics as cattle mutilations in the upper midwest and the many strange disappearances that remain unsolved.
After The Paracast — Available exclusively to Paracast+subscribers on March 15: Author Joe Kistner continues talking with Gene and cohost Tim Swartz about the topics that fuel his Shadows of the Midwest podcast. He will cover myths and legends from his home state of Minnesota, including UFOs and the reports of the recovery of the skeletons of giants who may have lived in ancient times. Joe also discusses reported cases of the stigmata phenomenon, where wounds and scars and pain erupt on the bodies of some people. He describes himself as a public servant, writer, dad, legend hunter, and a proud distinguished ruffian. Currently, he is working on the book “Minnesota Legend Hunters: A Travelogue,” which he hopes will be released in the summer of 2025. He describes the book as compiling and investigating the strange and unusual people, places, things, and events reported across the state.
Reminder: Please don't forget to visit our famous Paracast Community Forums for the latest news/views/debates on all things paranormal: The Paracast Community Forums. And look for @theparacast on Bluesky Social, Facebook, Threads and X.
Truck Stop Earth
By Tim R. Swartz
Unidentified flying objects have been zipping through the skies of planet Earth as long as there have been people around to watch them. Ancient writings, folklore and religious texts are full of tales of unusual, glowing airships and the weird creatures contained within them, and much like the UFOs, the strange beings inside come in an amazing and prolific range of extraordinary shapes and sizes.
For someone whose only knowledge of UFOs comes from YouTube or other social media, this may seem perplexing. After all, anyone who has watched television or gone to the movies in the last thirty years knows flying saucers are spaceships carrying little gray men from outer space. The gray alien with large black eyes has seemingly supplanted the hundreds of other weird beings reported over the decades by UFO witnesses. However, the gray alien stereotype is a relatively recent addition to the pantheon of "aliens" that have interacted with mankind throughout history.
Gods From Other Worlds
The Philistine deity, Dagon, who was one of the four sons of Anu, the lord of heaven, was said to have a human face and hands, but a portion of his body resembled a fish. Dagon flew down from the sky in a ball of fire and taught mankind the ways of the plough and agriculture.
As well, a history of Mesopotamia written in the third century BC by Berossus, a Babylonian priest, states that ancient man lived in a lawless manner like the beasts of the field. In those days there appeared a creature whose name was Oannes, or Ea meaning the "fish of heaven." Oannes body was like a fish, and under the fish's head he had another head, and connected to the fish's tail, he had feet similar to those of a man.
Oannes taught mankind writing and math, and he is credited by the Sumerians for giving civilization to man. Oannes was said to return to the sea every evening, but when he departed for the last time, he flew up into the sky and returned to the heavens.
Coptic Gnostic texts that were written around the first and second centuries CE contains passages that describe ancient encounters with alien-like beings called the Archons. A passage from The First Apocalypse of James (NHC V, 3) states: "A multitude of Archons may turn on you, thinking they can capture you. And in particular, three of them will seize you, those who pose as toll collectors. Not only do they demand toll, but they take away souls by theft. They are not entirely alien, for they are from the Fallen Sophia, the female divinity who produced them when she brought the human race down from the Source, the realm of the Pre-Existent One. So they are not entirely alien, but they are our kin."
It is interesting to note that the actions of the Gnostic Archons bear a close resemblance to modern reports of UFO abductions, and the mysterious Men-In-Black, who supposedly travel in threes and pose as authority figures.
Space Brothers and Hairy Dwarfs
It was not until the 20th century that unexplained aerial objects received worldwide attention and were given a name, UFOs, or flying saucers. Starting in the late 1940s the first investigators became convinced early on that UFOs were extraterrestrial spacecraft. Not surprisingly, the phenomenon quickly seemed to adapt to this belief system.
It is difficult to resist the siren call of the extraterrestrial hypothesis. Many UFO sightings in the early 1950s reported structured machines that performed amazing aerial maneuvers beyond what conventional, earthly aircraft of the day could do. As well, when the UFOs actually landed, the creatures coming out acted just like what we expected from astronauts from another planet. They wore futuristic looking spacesuits with helmets. They took soil, rock, water, and fauna samples before reentering their craft and zipping away.
Not unexpectedly, the 1950s saw the beginnings of the "contactee movement" when the very human looking “Space Brothers” got tired of simply collecting dirt, and began to actually initiate conversations with the shocked witnesses alongside lonely country roads. From that point, the UFOs stopped being a strange sky phenomenon, and instead became a strange social phenomenon.
The most frequently reported of all the UFO occupant cases are dwarf-like creatures that average three to four feet in height. Their complexion has been described as ranging from dark and swarthy to very pale, often bordering on white, although reddish and bluish skin colors have also been mentioned. One of the more bizarre groups of UFO creatures seen, especially in the 1950's, were animal-like hairy dwarves.
In the early morning hours of November 28, 1954 two truck drivers from Caracas, Venezuela, Jose Ponce, and Gustavo Gonzales were driving to Petare, about fifteen miles away from Caracas. Around 2:00 AM the men found their way blocked by a glowing disc-shaped object about ten feet in diameter, which was hovering about six feet above the street.
Both men got out and walked closer to the object and were approached by what appeared to be a very hairy dwarf-like man. Gonzales impulsively grabbed the creature and lifted him off the ground, but the creature twisted out of the truck driver's grasp and attacked him with its webbed hands and inch-long claws.
Gonzales later told police that he tried to fight back with a knife into the creature's shoulder, but the blade glanced off as if it were made of metal. At this point Jose Ponce panicked and ran to seek help from a nearby police station.
As Gonzales tried to fight off his strange attacker, another hairy little man jumped out of the glowing craft and pointed a small shiny tube at the man. There was a blinding beam of light, and when Gonzales could see again, the creatures were gone and the object was flying away.
Gonzales ran for the police station and showed up a couple of minutes after Ponce. At first police thought the men were drunk or crazy. A doctor was brought in, who determined that both men were in a state of shock and that neither of them had been drinking. Gonzales was treated for a long deep scratch down his left side and later reports said that it eventually healed but left a permanent scar.
They Might Be Giants
On the opposite end of the scale are the UFO giants. Even though the reports about them are not nearly as numerous as the small humanoids, the UFO giants certainly are the most bizarre of the UFO occupants.
The giants are the least humanlike of all reported entities—with sightings describing creatures seven to nine feet tall and an amazing diversity ranging from one-eyed Cyclops, beings with black-faces, bushy black hair, and in some instances, with three unblinking eyes and large, round heads.
One amazing story was the account of a truck driver named Eugenio Douglas who had to fight off three "shiny metal robots" some fifteen to twenty feet tall. This happened in Argentina on October 18, 1963.
Douglas told police that a brilliant white light forced him to drive his truck into a ditch outside of the town of Monte Maix. The light, he said, came from a twenty-five-foot disk parked in the middle of the road.
When he got out of his truck, Douglas was approached by three "indescribable beings" that tried to grab him. He managed to draw his pistol and fired several shots at the giants, who seemed unfazed by the bullets. Douglas managed to get away and run toward town as the saucer lifted off the road and made several passes at him. With each pass, Douglas said he felt "a wave of terrible, suffocating heat." The police examiner later found that Douglas had suffered a number of unusual burns.
These are just a few of the thousands of unusual UFO occupant sightings that have been reported over the years. Many of these strange cases receive little attention because they do not fall within the boundaries that UFO researchers have imposed on what they consider to be acceptable cases.
The incredible variety of UFO occupants should give investigators pause to reconsider the popular theory that UFOs are interplanetary spaceships. Unless planet Earth is some sort of intergalactic truck stop, it is difficult to explain why each UFO occupant sighting tends to be unique. Nevertheless, whatever their sources or origins, one thing is clear; the UFO occupants are as many and diverse as the stars in the heavens.
• • •
Tim R. Swartz is an Indiana native and Emmy-Award winning television producer/videographer, and is the author of a number of popular books including The Lost Journals of Nikola Tesla, Gef the Talking Mongoose, and is a contributing writer for such books as, Brad Steiger's Real Monsters, Gruesome Critters, and Beasts from the Darkside, and Real Ghosts, Restless Spirits and Haunted Places. His most recent books, along with author Sean Casteel are Weird Time – Exploring the Mysteries of Time and Space, and Mimics — The Others Among Us.
As a photojournalist, Tim Swartz has traveled extensively and investigated paranormal phenomena and other unusual mysteries in such diverse locations as the Great Pyramid in Egypt to the Great Wall in China. He has worked with major television networks both national and international.
Tim has appeared on the documentary “The Myth of Tesla,” as well as The History Channels programs "Ancient Aliens,” “Evidence," "Ancient Aliens: Declassified,” "The UnXplained,” and the History Channel Latin America series "Contacto Extraterrestre.”
His articles have been published in magazines such as Mysteries, FATE, Strange, Atlantis Rising, UFO Universe, Flying Saucer Review, Renaissance, and Unsolved UFO Reports.
Tim is also the co-host/co-producer of The Paracast with Gene Steinberg at: www.theparacast.com
His website is: www.weirdtimebook.com
Copyright 1999-2025 The Paracast Company. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy: Your personal information is safe with us. We will positively never give out your name and/or e-mail address to anybody else, and that's a promise!