One report even speaks of a nearby stone stairway leading deep into the earth. The witnesses failed to fully investigate this stairway, however. As they were descending into the gloomy darkness, they claimed they were suddenly struck with an overpowering sense of terror. The wave of fear which struck them was utterly unexplainable, yet so irresistible that they immediately fled the area never to return. Many may scoff at the notion but, for those who do, I can say that I have personally felt this ‘projected’ wave of fear and can honestly say that it is everything the witnesses claim.
Rumor has long held that immense caves also exist beneath the town of Lexington, Kentucky which once held the strangely crafted relics of a mysterious Indian, or ‘Pre-Indian’ race. No intrepid Bluegrass spelunkers, to my knowledge, have ever taken it upon themselves to either prove or disprove this allegation, which leads one to wonder. Then again, perhaps they have long ago been explored and plundered of their enigmatic treasures. The location of the mysterious caves may be known to some even as you read this now, but being kept a very closely-guarded secret.
The Tommyknockers
For many generations countless coalminers the world over have told tales of underground encounters with strange little men. Yet another breed of subterranean inhumanoids, or perhaps the same ones in different guises, the Tommyknockers seem to be somewhat more magnanimous in their dispositions toward surface-dwellers, but just as
inexplicable and capable of making much mischief at human expense if they so choose. Depending on the region, some folklore paints these entities as the ghosts of dead miners, forever trapped beneath the ground in the places of their deaths, while other examples portray them as more akin to the elves or dwarves of yore.
Dwarves were well known, in days of old, for their penchant for tunneling beneath great mountains to mine their precious minerals. Indeed, the typical Tommyknocker description seems to lend itself well to this notion. According to tradition they stand about three feet tall, have large, oversized heads and smallish bodies, disproportionately long arms and wrinkled faces framed by long beards.
Miners who have spent a lot of time underground claim that they hear the Tommyknockers more than see them. They would sometimes hear them knocking and tapping on the other side of walls of solid rock. When the miners knocked on the walls themselves, the Tommyknockers would knock right back. They were often blamed for cave-ins or the disappearances of valuable tools, and many miners made a habit of leaving a small portion of their lunches for the entities in order to keep the peace.
The Tommyknockers can be ill-tempered and cruel, it is believed but, on the other hand, they have also been credited with attempting to offer comfort to trapped miners, and even saving their lives. And not all Tommyknockers, it would seem, appear as diminutives. Some appear to witnesses as quite human-looking, aside from being oddly-apparelled for such underground excursions.
On Dec. 26, 1945, a mine explosion in the Belva Mine in Pineville, Kentucky, Bell County, trapped several unfortunate men deep below ground. What makes this different from any other ‘ordinary’ mine explosion is that, when the men were rescued some, of them insisted that they saw a “door” open up in one of the solid rock walls, and a man dressed as a “lumberjack” emerge from a well-lighted room. After assuring the trapped men that they would be rescued, the strangely-dressed visitor returned to the room, the door immediately closing behind him leaving only solid stone.
Other accounts have been reported during similar mine disasters, such as the one at a Shipton, Pennsylvania mine, where other ‘lumberjack’ or ‘telephone linemen’ type entities were seen. In some cases the strange “workmen,” as if taking on the roles of guardian angels, even offered the trapped men unusual “lighting” to keep them out of the dark and in relative comfort. In other cases “astral visions” even accompanied these visits. Many have speculated that these beings must be from another dimension, or from the future, explaining how they knew that rescue attempts would be successful.
While working on the tunnel that was constructed beneath the Thames River in London in the fall of 1968, a number of rugged Irish laborers insisted that they had a run-in with the Tommyknockers. Lou Chalmers was hard at his task when he felt something brush his neck, he claimed. He turned around and saw something man-like standing in the darkness with its arms stretched out. He didn’t stick around for a more detailed study of the creature, opting to exit the area as quickly as possible. From what we have seen, this was most likely a wise call. Another laborer who saw the figure emerged from the tunnel “white as a sheet” and immediately set off to get a good, stiff drink.
The sole survivor of the famous 1936, Moose River Mine disaster in Nova Scotia, Alfred Scadding, claimed that just minutes before the cave-in he was on his way to join the others when “I came to a cross cut, a tunnel running across the one I was in, and as I passed, I looked left. I saw a small light, like a flashlight, about two feet from the ground and swinging as if in someone’s hand, moving away from me. Two minutes after I saw the light, the mine came in on us.” Scadding was trapped with two other men, both of whom perished.
After his rescue he was told that there were no other human beings down in the mine at the time of the disaster. This puzzled him because, after the three of them had been trapped for a long time, they had heard the sounds of shouting and human laughter. They were all clear-headed and conscious at the time, he said. At first they thought that they were hearing children playing up on the surface, the sounds being carried to them by an unseen vent. They had listened to these sounds for a full twenty-four hours, Scadding claimed. But who could have found the plight of the trapped men to be a source of amusement and joy? Hmm...
Are the dero a possible source of the worldwide legends of diminutives such as fairies, dwarves, Leprechauns and Tommyknockers, or is it the other way around? Did Richard Shaver take these legends and blend them into one well-conceived and imaginative race of subterranean inhumanoids, or was he actually being contacted by the descendants of the Atlans? The more one considers the notion the more it seems a very comfortable fit indeed. But it hardly matters in the end. All that really matters is that these entities are down there somewhere, far beneath our feet, going about their mysterious business unseen and unconsidered.
The technology which these stories reveal is of a diminutive race which uses “rods” and “rays” to accomplish many seemingly impossible feats. It is interesting to note that many ancient cultures, such as the Mayans and the Egyptians for example, crafted images of gods and demigods as humanoid figures holding mysterious rod-like objects in their hands.
One account springs to mind of a short-order cook named Robert who encountered such figures in Branch Hill, Ohio in 1955. He had left the all-night diner where he worked at about 4:00 a.m. one morning in March and taken an isolated country road in order to avoid traffic lights in his weary eyes. Suddenly he came upon what he took to be three men praying beside the road. Even though he was dead tired, curiosity got the better of him and he pulled over and stopped the car, headlights shining on the men, intending to see what was going on.
He opened the door and stepped out onto the gravel, and realized that he’d made a mistake. These weren’t men at all. He didn’t know what they were, and they weren’t kneeling. The beings were short and standing in a triangular pattern facing away from him. The figure which formed the apex of the triangle suddenly raised up its arms and appeared to be holding some sort of rod in its hands. Amazingly, blue and white sparks were jumping from one of his hands to the other, just above and below the rod.
Now Robert was painfully aware of his situation. He was alone on a remote stretch of darkened, wooded road, outside his car and in the company of some bizarre unknown, diminutive inhumanoids. Their ritual apparently over, the beings turned and faced Robert.
In the glare of the headlights he could see them quite clearly and later described them as being about three and a half feet tall with gray skin and what he thought were tight
fitting uniforms of the same hue, even though he could see no line marking the end of the apparel and the beginning of skin. They had big, straight mouths with no lips and human-looking eyes with no eyebrows. He did not see any noses on the creatures. He further described the upper portion of their heads as bald, with either a roll of fat or a ridge of bone running along the top. Their bodies were human-like, but appeared lopsided, with unusual bulges on their right sides and the arms on the right sides of their bodies appeared longer than the left.
The entities then began to walk toward the witness, who sensed that he should flee, which he did immediately. As he was driving away he was almost overcome by a sickening, foul odor which he felt had been directed at him by the creatures as they watched him speed away. Perhaps the entities were distant cousins of the ‘Mad Gasser’ seen over in Mattoon, Illinois in the 1940s. (see Mad Gassers and Phantom Clowns.)
The Tommyknockers, like their cousins the Dwarves, may be simply regional variances of the Gnomes. The Gnomes are far older than their collective name, which first appeared in the writings of Swiss alchemist Paracelsus in the sixteenth century. They were considered sprites of the earth and hills, wore beards and tight-fitting brown clothing with hoods, were believed to watch over hidden subterranean treasures and were also guardians of the sacred woods. Paracelsus most likely called them Gnomes because the word gnosis, in Greek, means ‘knowledge’ and the Gnomes supposedly knew the exact places where precious metals are to be found.
The Draco
Many believe that the underground kingdoms are ruled by the Draco, descendants of a race of evil lizard-men which were, long ago in the dim reaches of the planet’s distant past, the dominant humanoid species on the surface. Like Shaver’s dero, the Draco are also said to be extremely malevolent toward top-siders and constantly scheme to overthrow the surface-dwellers and dominate the earth once again. To accomplish this they make use of their highly accomplished technology, thousands of years more advanced than our own and often visit the surface world in many of the aerial vehicles we call ‘flying saucers.’
It is well known to most ufologists that many UFO occupants are described as “reptilian” and some believe that the diminutive alien “Grays” are actually the descendants of these reptilian beings. Needless to say, these creatures are also believed to be amphibious and are as equally at home in large bodies of water as they are in their underground caverns.
Fortean author Neil Arnold reprints an interesting account which, if true, seems to lend credence to the theory that a race of highly advanced reptile-men may inhabit the nocturnal world beneath our feet:
Location - Near Carthage, Missouri.
Date - 7th March, 2004.
Time - Afternoon.
Two witnesses had gone riding all-terrain vehicles in a place called ‘The Underground’ which is a public and private storage facility near the town. The facility is miles and miles of carved out caves and also stores thousands of dehydrated food containers for the Navy. It is also a fallout shelter and can hold up to 50,000 people.
They had gone about eight miles deep into the caves when they turned into an area that was marked “Naval Authoritative Zone.” The walls became more defined as if polished or finished, and this was striking because this was supposed to be a newly blasted area. Both witnesses just kept on going, increasing their speed since the floor was paved now. Then they came upon an unusual painted pattern on the floor, which they thought was graffiti. The road then dipped down and took a ninety-degree turn to the left. They were going too fast and knew they were going to hit it (the rock wall) but didn’t.
They passed through some kind of holographic projection of the cave wall. Now they had come upon a whole new road system; this one large and much older than the one they had come from. They began to notice an odor, that was musty and damp that grew stronger as they went deeper into the area. The lighting had changed as well. It was now sixty-percent darker than the area from which they had come.
They turned on their headlights and slowed down, also noticing that it was getting cooler. They made a right turn and started to come up on what they thought was a rest area about 40-feet away. One of the witnesses then saw something that, at first, he thought were a pair of fountains until they moved.
They both stopped immediately. About 30-feet away they saw two creatures, one was very tall (at least seven-feet, maybe more) and very powerfully built, it was reddish in color. The other was smaller (about six-feet tall) and was pale, almost albino in color. They resembled large reptiles.
They said nothing but the witnesses did get a strong malevolent feeling, an evil presence of some kind from the taller one. One of the men screamed and they turned around and started back. The other man looked back and saw that the taller entity was following them. He received an overwhelming feeling that if it caught them, harm would come to them.
They passed through the projection wall again, and looked back and saw the tall entity raise its arm and it held a weapon of some sort, it fired and hit one of the vehicles, killing the engine and causing it to stop. The rider ran to the other vehicle, jumped on it and they drove away, noticing that the reptile creature had stopped at the graffiti area on the cave floor. It was obvious that the creature would not cross the strange marked area.
The witnesses now slowed and were about 75-feet away from the creature. They stared at the creature for around fifteen seconds and then they left. The creature remained standing in the area. The witnesses phoned the police after the ordeal and were told that security in the area would deal with the matter. However, security waited for the men and threatened to arrest them if they did not leave the area.”
Homo Nocturnis
Another subterranean inhumanoid enigma which I have often pondered and is worthy of mention here is the mystery of the “Moon-Eyed People,” a race of strange albinos which were said to once inhabit the back hills of Kentucky and Tennessee. They were called the “Moon Eyes” by the early Indians because their eyes were very large and apparently acutely sensitive to sunlight, hence, they could only see adequately after darkness had fallen. In his book ‘The Mothman Prophecies,’ Fortean investigator John Keel alludes briefly, in passing, to the mystery of the Moon-eyes.
According to Benjamin Smith Barton’s, New Views of the Origins of the Tribes and Nations of America, published in 1798, the Cherokee Indians, a branch of the Iroquoian tribe, have an oral tradition that speaks of the time when they migrated into Tennessee. In the remote hills of that state they came upon a strange tribe of white men that were highly advanced and, like the Alligewi of Delaware tradition, lived in stone houses. They were a nocturnal people with large eyes that would not work in the light of the sun. They also possessed a different language which sounded like gibberish and could not be understood by the Cherokee. Because they could not be communicated with the Indians expelled these “wretches;” driving them out of the area and into the surrounding hills. In his book, which he dedicated to Thomas Jefferson, Barton implies that the mounds in Tennessee are the work of the Moon-eyed people.
Twenty six years later, in 1824, a writer named John Haywood stated that the invading Cherokees had found white people of this nature living near the mouth of the Little Tennessee River, with stone forts extending down as far as the Chicamauga creek.
If this race of bug-eyed albinos does, in fact, still exist, they presumably remain in hiding, which they do quite well it would seem, for I have come across no other mention of them in recent years. Perhaps they are living even now in their caves and subterranean caverns, far from the sunlight and the attentions of mankind, straying from their darkened sanctuaries only in the black of night to hunt and forage unmolested in the moonlight.
Part Six:
Men in Black and other Otherworldly Visitors
“The whole UFO/monster phenomenon is like a Chinese nest of boxes. Open one and you find another one inside.”
-John Keel
Men In Black
When it comes to
otherworldly inhumanoid accounts, the grandaddy of them all is the ‘Men In Black,’ or MIB, phenomenon. These bizarre inhumanoids are most often encountered after a witness has experienced some type of dramatic or prolonged UFO sighting or encounter. They appear suddenly and unexpectedly, sometimes even before the witness has had the chance to tell another human soul of his experience. They ask unusual questions, demand any evidence which may have been collected, especially photographs, and often warn the witness not to talk about the incident to anyone using vague threats of physical harm; or worse.
There is most often something which seems a little ‘odd’ about these entity’s appearance and behavior as well; something not quite right. They arrive in outdated vehicles, often decades old but in mint condition, wearing out of style dark suits and dark glasses to conceal their not quite human eyes. They sometimes speak in a manner which doesn’t quite make sense and express wonder at such simple human devices as fountain pens and other common household items. Some claim to work for the U.S. Government, the C.I.A. or the F.B.I., but, when their names or license plate numbers are later checked, they officially do not exist at all.
Witnesses are usually put ‘out of sorts’ when MIB arrive, and often act completely out of character for no reason at all. Later, after thinking about it for a time, most MIB witnesses express complete amazement that they even consented to let such intimidating strangers into their homes at all. But one thing is consistent among MIB witnesses; they all let them in.
The modern MIB phenomenon, as it is popularly known, really began on the same day the modern “saucer era” was born. June 24th, 1947. That day pilot Kenneth Arnold observed nine curious, “crescent moon” shaped objects skipping through the air “like a speed boat bounces off waves” above Mt. Baker in Washington State. When he revealed his sighting to the press it caused a sensation and public interest in the ‘flying saucer’ subject “soared to new heights,” (pun intended) allowing the MIB, and all the other staples of ufology, a very effective pathway into public conscious.
The Inhumanoids Page 26
