Encounters with the Unknown May 2022

Alternate Perceptions Magazine, April 2022

Encounters with the Unknown

Giant Indian spirits and snakes?

by: Brent Raynes

Sometimes, in your inquiries into folklore and the paranormal, you come upon stories that are told by very credible seeming people but the stories are just so darned hard to wrap your mind around. For example, in May 1976, I finally met John C. P., a resident here in Waynesboro, Tenn., who told about how when he was a young man sometime back around 1924-5, early summer, while living on a hill off of Hog Creek, he was with his brother, likely squirrel hunting at the time, when something really bizarre happened. At the time, John had a white cat perched up on his shoulders. The cat used to help him with his squirrel hunting, scurrying up trees to help capture game. So anyway, on this particular day John claimed that he was very startled to see what looked like a 15-20 foot tall Native American standing on a hill some 50-60 feet away. Shocked and speechless, he said he watched as the Indian man shot an arrow, the size of a spear, in his direction. The arrow allegedly knocked the cat to the ground behind him 6-8 feet away. The Indian man then disappeared before John’s astonished eyes.

His brother had been looking in another direction at the time, but helped his brother John to pick up the cat, which they were convinced was dead. Then they walked over to the edge of a road looking at a hole in a nearby embankment left by the arrow, but then mysteriously the ground there was smooth again, there was no hole, and the cat was alive again!

John said that the Indian had red and blue feathers composing a headdress and were down around the sides of his body as well.

In addition, later that summer, the family would witness a number of strange skyfalls near their home, looking like a rock, making the noise of air passage on descent, pulverized into pieces upon impact with the ground, that also vanished soon following impact, and in one instance a rooster was struck and they thought was killed, but in a few seconds returned to life. I was also told of arrowheads being left on the ground following some of these strange skyfalls.

All sorts of odd things the family claimed happened to them while living there. The mother had seen a "ball of fire" with a "deep red" color to it rolling down the road by their home. She had also seen a man dressed in blue clothing disappear without a trace. John even claimed one day to have seen an impossibly huge "snake" [we're talking hundreds of feet in length] with black and orange stripes down its body, with “scales like a snake,” but kind of resembling a candy stick. The thing disappeared underneath a flat rock, and when the rock was removed later there was nothing but smooth ground underneath it. Paul also claimed that its body was 10-12 inches in thickness, that it had a large head, with like an active feeler or tongue, and yellowish eyes with like black pupils.

I wondered (and still do) about the Native American elements of the story and whether the grounds there may have been part of ancient Native rituals or something? A Native Susquehannock medicine man we'd met in Pennsylvania spoke of a giant race known to his people as the Yuh-dush-gwa, and told of his encounter with a giant rattlesnake apparition when he was out hiking with an uncle as an 8-year-old boy. He said it uncoiled before them and began gliding up a mountain. "Then the huge snake (about 150 feet long) began to fade out like the dying embers of a log fire and disappear. It was the Spirit of the Great Serpent in the Sky Garden." He added, "At uncle Tall Willow's instruction I sat for about an hour on the spot where the big rattlesnake spirit had been coiled. Rattlesnake is my family totem."

Colleen Newholy, who I interviewed about UFOs on the rez for the October 2018 edition, as she’s a member of the Oglala Sioux tribe of Pine Ridge and her mom is enrolled with the Omaha Tribe of Nebraska, had this to say after reading my above write-up:

“Big snakes are a part of many Lakota stories. A lot of them have to do the feuding between the Thunderbird and the Water Monster.

“With the big snakes it takes seven sacred arrows, tipped with swan feathers to kill them

“The giants are also an important aspect as they used to eat people, but were eventually slain, or put to sleep.”

Swans have long been sacred to many ancient shamanic cultures throughout the world. In the newly released Origins of the Gods, Gregory Little wrote: “The Algonquin tribes revered swans, and the Navajo saw four swans located at the four corners of the world. Other tribes had powerful swan clans.” Co-author Andrew Collins also has been connecting similar dots in his research and investigations, pointing out a swan wing found at a burial site in Vedback, Denmark dated approximately 5,000 BCE, swan pendants at Lake Baikal found in southcentral Siberia dated to 24,000 years ago, and a remarkable cave site called the Qesem Cave, not far from Tel Aviv, Israel, undoubtedly a ver-ry ancient shamanistic site with a swan wing bone thought to be 300,000 years or more in age! Andrew was actually taken there by archeologists working on the site and got to examine and handle many of the remarkable artifacts collected there. Greg and Andrew are boots on the ground authors and their newly released book is a treasure trove of unique insight and information.

In the February 2015 edition of Alternate Perceptions, author Mary Sutherland contributed an article to us entitled Jennie The Lake Monster – Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Sutherland wrote:

At its deepest point of 142 feet, Lake Geneva is considered to be the second deepest lake in Wisconsin. It’s eight and half square miles of water is fed by underground springs. In these waters, lurks the giant lake monster, the locals call “Jennie”. According to an article by Herbert Wagner in “Wisconsin Outdoor Journal”, it was here in these deep waters where powerful sorcerers summoned the “Water Panthers”.

Lake Geneva, located in Walworth County has a long history of monster stories. The early indigenous people documented these strange water creatures by creating earthen mounds to depict their size and shape. Known today as “Panther” Mounds, these effigies once adorned the shore of Flat Iron Park in the city of Lake Geneva. Another one of these effigy type mounds is located between Burlington and New Munster off Hwy 83. From their oral history, The Potawatomi Indians tell of the great battles that took place between the “Water Panthers” and the “Thunderbirds” off the shores of a peninsula called Conference Point. The waters off this point are the deepest part of the lake and reported to be the site of mystical events. According to “Wisconsin Indian Place Legends”, re-told by Linda Godfrey in her book “Monsters of Wisconsin”, Native American Indian Legend tells about how the Thunderbirds dropped their huge eggs at the water monsters that defended themselves by rolling the waters back at them. The greatest force of the battles, allegedly carved the bluffs around Devil's Lake near Baraboo. The Thunderbirds won and flew away into the sky to places unknown. Sightings of The Water Panthers that survived these great battles bear evidence today of a time long forgotten by modern man.

For anyone wishes to read Mary’s entire article, here’s the link: https://www.apmagazine.info/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=624&Itemid=53