Strangest of All

On a warm September afternoon, David Lang walks across a grassy field and vanishes in full sight of his family and other witnesses. Disappearances are always intriguing, even more so when they happen between one step and the next, but the real story behind this story is one of frantic borrowing of stories between authors of "strange true tales" that goes back almost as far as the story itself. And, while the fate of David Lang may ultimately be more of a literary concern a police matter, there's a very real disappearance behind it all, one that has been unsolved for over a century.

Veteran seaman and journalist Thomas Helm paid a visit to Florida's Gulf Coast in the 1960s and had a run in with a creature that was unlike anything he'd ever seen before. The story of his "sea monster" encounter is mixed with a explanation behind of a very real lake monster, and the true life tale of how Helm is responsible for one of the best scenes in film history.

In 1835, the New York Sun reported the latest news from one of the world's best-known astronomers. That news: Life on the Moon. And not just any life, but a whole civilization of flying people with wings like bats. The story of their cities and temples, along with herds of great buffalo unicorns, and giant beavers that walked on their hind legs, populated The Sun for days, and created a furor among the public that's remembered almost two centuries later. And it created a literary feud that was recorded in one of the great works of science fiction.

In 1951 ...or 1953, depending in who is telling the story, a young woman named Clarita Villenueva was arrested in Manila. What happened after that is a story that made headlines in papers around the world, became a spooky tale in the hands of a radio showman, and launched a massive broadcasting conglomerate that's still around today. One woman, two invisible creatures, and two broadcasters who took the story in very different directions in this episode of Strangest of All.

On a summer night in 1955, a family rushed into a small town police station and reported a running gun battle with "small dark figures" that were trying to break int their home. The incident became famous in UFO circles, both for the number of witnesses and the term it left behind -- Little Green Men.+

In the 1940s, Frank Edwards was a respected broadcaster hired by some of the nation's largest stations and broadcasters, but then something went wrong. An obsession got in the way of Edward's career and derailed his change to be national newscaster. That obsession was UFOs.

A decade later he was back at a small radio station, doing a unique radio show for a small but growing audience. It wasn't just about UFOs. Edwards became a follower of many strange theories, a researcher into the history of odd phenomenon, and a popularizer of weird events around the world. Over the course of three decades he wrote a number of books chronicling hundreds of unique occurrences, and gained a following on both radio and TV.

Though Edwards is little remembered today, it seems only appropriate that this podcast -- which is titled after one of his books -- should start with an homage to Edwards as well as an example of exactly the kind of story that I intend to tell in each episode.