Alternate Perceptions Magazine, October 2026
The Case for Simulated Reality
By: Dennis Stamey
By the beginning of the first millennium, the forests of Europe were being cleared. The loss of habitat for wild animals, particularly wolves, forced them to prey on livestock or make forays into towns and villages. The chronicler Adam of Bremen recorded how residents of Hamburg saw, in 1072; hogs and dogs desecrating the church...wolves howling in packs in the suburbs of our city, vying with horned owls in a horrific contest. Others record how rabid wolves terrorized towns in Wales in 1166, and in south Germany in 1271. Friar Salimbene di Adam’s chronicle of events in 1247 Italy mentions wolves gathering in great numbers around the moats of the cities; howling from the pangs of hunger, before penetrating the walls and devouring anyone sleeping outside. They were known, he said, to break down wooden house walls and snatch infants from their cradles.
But did this happen? It sounds unbelievable. I can buy wolf attacks on livestock but coordinated attacks on towns? Implausible. Were these chroniclers lying or merely reporting scuttlebutt from superstitious peasants? But as the Italian friar declared: “Nobody could believe unless they had seen as I have seen the horrible things done during that time.” So apparently, he was a witness to a few of these horrors.
I have another idea. What if these ferocious wolf packs weren’t real but some sort of paranormal phenomena. More implausible you might say. Agreed but let me put this into better perspective.
The European wilderness in medieval times was seen as a stage for eerie plays with bizarre characters who might charm one minute and devour you the next. A funhouse of terror and delight where predators roamed, people got lost forever, and sounds at night froze the blood. But it was also a place where songbirds sang, time slowed, and honey, berries, and acorns could be foraged for free.
Not only was the populace frightened and bedazzled by the wilderness, but all they knew was disorder, mass migration, wars and raiding parties, pandemics like the Black Death. By the mid-1600s, the population had diminished by a third of its original size, probably falling as low as 18 million. That’s extremely small considering that Europe today has a population of 750 million.
Were the howling wolves of Hamburg a collective delusion fashioned out of people’s fears and angst? Many years later, another wolf, or something akin to it, ravaged the countryside between 30 June 1764 and 19 June 1767 (although there were reports of its depredations a couple of years earlier) in the former province of Gevaudan (consisting of the modern-day department of Lozere and part of Haute-Loire). The creature, known as the Beast of Gevaudan, reportedly killed as many as 113 people and injured 49. 98 of the victims were said to have been partially eaten. Some estimates are a bit lower.
The first official attack occurred last on June 30, 1764, when 14-year-old Jeanne Boulet was killed near the village of Saint-Étienne-de-Lugdarès. A month later, a 15-year-old girl was attacked near Puylaurent in the same area. Although grievously wounded, she managed to utter that what mauled her was “a horrible beast.” Officials wondered if there was a connection between these attacks and the killing of a boy on September 8, 1762, who was herding the flock of sheep near the village of Laval in the province of Dauphiné. His partially eaten bones were found sometime later.
What was the beast? Another big bad wolf that ran out of game and had to resort to eating humans? Those who survived their maulings described it as being orange-brownish in color with dark streaks along its torso and a dark stripe down its back and a tail that ended with a tuft at the end. The beast had an elongated head similar to that of a greyhound including a flattened snout, pointed ears, and a wide mouth. They estimated it to be the size of a calf, a cow, or even a horse and said that it almost flew across the field to pounce on its victims. How could an animal that huge be so agile?
A local hunter named Jean Chastel shot a large critter on the slopes of Mont Mouchet in June 1767. A post-mortem examination determined that it was a large wolf or wolfdog. But was this the Beast of Gevaudan? But a wolf or a hybrid wolfdog, even a large one, doesn’t match the description of the beast. Moreover, predatory attacks on humans by wolves is extremely rare. Why bother when you have flocks of tasty sheep everywhere?
The marauding stopped but as I’ve said elsewhere, if the belief in a cryptid or a spook dissolves, then the creature will dissolve as well.
A few years ago, I conceived of the theory of “simulated reality” (SR) in a book I wrote called The Halloween Planet to explain most paranormal phenomena from UFOs to lake monsters. As I wrote: “When I mention simulated reality I mean reality created by a computer program as in The Matrix franchise or the simulation theory. We’re talking about a hyper-realistic, yet false reality created by some paranormal intelligence, an intelligence able to play with consciousness like a child plays with putty. And what is reality but consciousness? As a New Age devotee once explained, consciousness is in everything and everything is in consciousness. It is omnipresent. Without it, nothing would exist. Exploiting reality/consciousness incidentally is the crux of magic.
Was the Beast of Gevaudan simulated reality, a horror conceived out of the collective consciousness of the good people of that region, brought into our realm, and enveloped in a fake and temporal reality that gave it real fangs and a real appetite for human flesh? Was the large wolf that the hunter shot another SR manifestation? I believe that these fake realities can also leave physical traces behind not only impressions in the ground or scorch marks as with UFOs but even carcasses, which means SR is not necessarily temporal.
But why 1764 (or 1762) and why France? In The Halloween Planet I also stated: “Mass anxiety or psychic trauma resulting from wars or threat of wars, as well as social upheaval can induce this high power to manifest even more weird events, we said, often in waves like the UFO tsunami of 1967-69 when the Vietnam War and political unrest were raging. Then another wave crashed upon us in October 1973 during the Yom Kippur War, when the United States and the Soviets were about to be sucked into the conflagration.”
1763 wasn’t one of the country's best years. France had lost the Seven Years War and made peace by signing the Treaty of Paris. As a result, it lost nearly all its mainland North American empire including Canada and territory east of the Mississippi River to Great Britain and western territory to Spain. However, it was able to keep its lucrative sugar islands in the Caribbean like Guadeloupe. The Seven Years War fought between 1756 and 1763 had been a bloody costly affair. In fact, many historians consider it to be the first true world war since it spanned multiple continents and resulted in an estimated 900,000 to 1.4 million military deaths, alongside hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties caused by disease, famine, and being in the crosshairs of the combatants.
There are dozens upon dozens of weird encounters that have been reported within the last few decades that I believe can only be explained as manifestations of SR. Curtis Fuller in his “I See By the Papers” column in FATE Magazine for February 1977 mentions that in August 1976 near Enderlin, North Dakota, during a rash of bizarre cattle mutilations in the area a man driving home on highway 46 encountered several figures dressed in white robes and carrying candles. A week later similar figures were seen on a bridge over a railroad near Millsite Park. Shortly after that, a bull near there died mysteriously. Mr. Fuller never cited which paper he found this in.
UFO and humanoid expert Albert Rosales found this bizarre account in the July 2020 issue of NOUFA (Noticiero Ufológico Autónomo), a Latin American autonomous UFO news bulletin from Chile. In 1984, a woman named Monica, and her family went camping at the Camping Los Yugos near San Fabian de Alico, Nuble, Chile, known for its thermal baths and strange magnetic anomalies. One night she was at the baths by herself and heard a strange buzzing sound. That’s when she noticed luminous orbs floating in the air. Monica went to get the rest of her family so they could see the orbs themselves but as she was heading towards the campsite, she noticed a woman dressed in white with very long hair and an “angelical face” walking along an area visitors were prohibited to enter. Her daughter also saw the woman and thought that it was “very strange.” Sounds like one of those ubiquitous ghostly women in white.
Eventually it began to rain and the family sought shelter in their car (they hadn’t put up their tents yet). But they could barely move and as they stood there half-paralyzed, the family noticed the car doors continuously opening and closing on their own. Finally, the rain stopped and their malaise went away. They set up their tents and crawled inside to sleep, weary and bewildered. While the family slumbered, Monica detected noises outside. That’s when she saw a “tall lizardman” with a large head staring at her from the open flap in the tent (another archetypal entity). She woke her husband up and he too observed the creature. They rushed out and fled for their lives.
That morning, the couple found tracks (the report doesn’t say human or animal) that led to the prohibited area where the woman in white had been. They told the camp manager about their experience, and he timorously explained that those reptilian beings, which were four in number, lived in the area and that they would accept or reject campers depending on how they felt about them. Monica also noticed that the camp manager was recycling discarded food and believed he was feeding it to the beings.
The manager also informed the family (this is where the story gets dubious) that the area was one of three in the country which had a very high magnetic reading and that scientists and other investigators regularly came by. He added that behind the camping property in the middle of a river there was a rock that glowed an intense pink at night. The camping manager also related that some odd vases were unearthed during a construction project. The manager kept one of the vases while the other was kept by a construction worker. Later that night, the reptilian beings visited the manager demanding “their” vases back. He informed them that his wife would return the vase upon his death. The beings agreed to the arrangement and did not return.
It’s hard to believe such a fantastical tale and I initially didn’t want to include it, but in my opinion the sighting of the phantom woman in white, a topic I’ve long been fascinated with, gives it some credence.
Was all this SR (the vases could have been fake reality as well) attracted to the area because of its high magnetic readings? John Keel argued that anomalous window areas often centered directly over geological faults and locations with measurable magnetic deviations. I disagree somewhat, contending that these “haunted zones” as I call them have more to do with the region's history, especially when there has been violence. Perhaps though magnetism can occasionally act as a catalyst for the formation of false realities especially considering that reality and consciousness are energy (reality in my view being an extension of consciousness). Maybe that’s why many paranormal investigators claim that strange activity occurs frequently during electrical storms.
I did a quick check of Camping Los Yugos and couldn’t find any documented scientific reports, geological studies, or public records concerning magnetic anomalies. Was the story a fabrication, are magnetic anomalies there not officially recognized, or did Monica and her family momentarily step into an alternate world where they imagined that all this happened much like the poor folk of medieval Europe imagined that they were under siege by wolves? I think part of it was true while the rest could have been chimerical.
Mr. Rosales also presents another case from South America, this one supplied to him by fellow UFO/humanoid investigator Manuel Orrega Frutos. Sometime in 1956 in the district of Presidente Roque Sáenz Peña, Chaco, Argentina, a girl named Olimpia Ortiz and her two brothers went out to play in the fields one afternoon, ignoring their mother’s warning of “El Pombero,” a mischievous elfin creature who reputedly roamed the area. While playing, they heard a noise and, turning around, were horrified to see a “giant head” floating just above the ground. It had regular facial features, but its tongue was hanging out as if mocking them. The terrified children scattered for home. Did the children’s fears about “El Pombero,” which they must have put into the back of their minds as they went out to play, produce this illusion?
This next story, equally quixotic, is from an article in the online publication Wisconsin Frights written by Charles Hintz. On the night of March 14, 1981, Officer Jon Pepper was patrolling the Graceland Cemetery in Mineral Point, Wisconsin, where there had been problems with vandals. Suddenly his flashlight shone on a huge, dark figure among the headstones. Pepper later described the figure as “a huge person, wearing a black cape with a white painted face…… about 6′ 5″ and ugly.”
He approached the figure and asked what it was doing, but it simply ran away. The officer pursued the figure until it reached the edge of the cemetery, leaped over a four-foot fence, and vanished into an adjoining bull pasture.
Pepper and several other officers investigated the graveyard the next day but couldn’t find where the intruder had damaged anything. They followed footprints in the snow to the fence where the figure had jumped but didn’t find any on the other side. The next several weeks saw a rash of pranksters dressed as Count Dracula jumping out of the shadows at passersby’s.
The real caped figure wouldn’t reappear until 23 years later when, on a night in March of 2004 at around 9 p.m., when residents of an apartment complex reported to the police that they were being “heckled” by a person sitting in a tree outside the building.
Their description of the stranger tallied with that of the Mineral Point Vampire: a pale figure, dressed in dark, old-fashioned clothing, possibly a cape. But when officers arrived, the suspect jumped from the tree and fled into the night, leaving tracks in the fresh snow. They followed the tracks, which ended at a 10-foot-high cement wall.
On the evening of July 11, 2008, just outside of town at Ludden Lake Brandon Heinz and his girlfriend, Jamie Marker, were fishing off a jetty on the lake’s west shore when they heard strange noises underneath them. It sounded, they said, like something or someone climbing along the wooden structure of the jetty. When Heinz shined his flashlight between the boards, they heard splashing. That’s when they saw a pale-faced figure with dark hair pulling itself up onto the jetty. “It was wearing some kind of Dracula looking cape and a suit, sort of,” Heinz had reported. The couple ran away in fright, but Dracula pursued them. They reached their car and sped away. Once home, they called the police. Officers scoured the area but found nothing.
When Heinz and Marker returned the next day to retrieve their belongings, everything except for the flashlight, which Heinz had dropped.
That was the last time the vampire was ever seen. But why did it appear and why did it choose Mineral Point?
Mineral Point has a weird and colorful history. Cornish miners settled there in the 1800s bringing with them their customs and superstitions such as the belief in the piskies and Tommy Knockers, two types of fairy folk. Tommy Knockers were mischievous spirits who lived underground in the mines and protected the miners as long as they left behind bits of food.
The town was also home to the Ridgeway Ghost; the supposed apparition of a man killed in a bar fight. According to legend, the ghost appeared in 40-year cycles, beginning in the mid1800s and continuing into the 1900s.
There’s also a ghost alleged to haunt the historic Walker House. Local lore says it’s that of William Caffee who was hanged nearby for murder in 1842.
On a spring afternoon in 1987 about twenty people spotted what looked like a werewolf darting into a building where it transformed back into a human. The story was related second hand to Wisconsin researcher Linda Godfrey who wrote about it in her book Hunting the American Werewolf.
Vincent Price’s family also has a connection with Mineral Point. Although the “Master of Horror” never lived in the town nor ever visited it, several generations of his family did and many are buried in the Graceland Cemetery where the vampire made his debut.
SR can be produced not only outside of ourselves but inside, stemming from our individual consciousness and not only our collective consciousness. I’ve had many people tell me they've seen inexplicable aberrations when they were by themselves such as a ghost flitting through the hallway, a witch on a broom flying across the sky, or a little goblin cavorting in the backyard. Were they hallucinating or did their minds create something, perhaps out of their fears or their presuppositions.
One day while in the first grade I was sitting at my desk near the front when, for no reason, I kept looking behind me. As soon as I faced forward for the third or fourth time, somebody punched me in the back. I swiveled around and beheld a wizened old woman who had her face almost pressed against mine. Don’t you ever turn around again, she intoned. I began crying and my teacher and fellow students asked me what the matter was. I couldn’t explain to them what I had seen. Nobody else had noticed the old crone. Was she a ghost? How can ectoplasmic residue strike a living person? Although the school was old, built in the 1920s, I had never heard of it being haunted. I do know that I had a fear of mean old women back then as well as a loathing for school and its regimentation.
Did I manipulate an ersatz reality out of deep-seated emotions to create a hateful manifestation?
