Slenderman on "The Examiner" Online Newspaper

An update on the Slenderman story is on the Examiner.com

And now as a new book

Buy it on Amazon for only $10!

http://www.amazon.com/Slenderman-Fiction-Robin-S-Swope/dp/1477507795/

Trailer for the new documentary "Cryptotrip"

Documentary filmmaker Christopher Maloney (The Death of Andy Kaufman) is in production of a new documentary on Cryptid sightings across the United States. He interviews eye witnesses and explores the sighting locations. I was privileged to participate as well as many others, here is the movie's trailer:

New Bigfoot Photo?

From my Examiner page, a look at the new Bigfoot photo from blogger Melissa Hovey:
http://www.examiner.com/paranormal-in-pittsburgh/new-bigfoot-photo

What is a Demon? Part 2: Demonic Names

If you ever look into the topic of demonology or just a casual horror movie buff, you notice there are a lot of odd names for 'demons'. Just where did they come from, and what do they mean? In the ancient world it was believed that if you knew the name of an entity, you had power over it. We look at this and more in my Examiner article: "What is a Demon? Part 2: The Name Game"

Read it here on Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/paranormal-in-pittsburgh/what-is-a-demon-part-2-the-name-game#ixzz1mUlnfDwk

Woolly Mammoth footage a Hoax!

The mammoth footage featured by The Sun UK turns out to be a CGI hoax. The footage is from Ludovic Petho, a videographer. He took it as part of a documentary and the original footage, which has been online for quite a while, shows no animal crossing the river.

To quote CBS news,

"Petho filmed the river scene during a 10-day solo hike in the mountains as part of a video project he's working on about his grandfather's escape from a Siberian POW camp in 1915 and his walk across Siberia to Budapest, Hungary. The footage may end up being used in a documentary film -- but there's one big difference between the video he shot and the woolly mammoth video.

"I don't recall seeing a mammoth; there were bears, deer, and sable," he said in an interview with Life's Little Mysteries. "But no woolly mammoths. I had no idea my footage was used to make this fake sighting." Petho noted that his original video had been available on YouTube since July 2011, depicting an exactly identical scene -- minus the faked woolly mammoth, of course."

Read the full report along with the original video embedded here:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162-57377294/woolly-mammoth-video-a-hoax-original-footage-shows/

While the Mammoth in the hoax footage did look too "intentionally" blurry to be really taken seriously, it did strike our imaginations and hopes to find a living animal thought extinct. I guess we have to wait until our scientists clone a Mammoth to see one in person.

Until Next Time,
Pastor Swope

Woolly Mammoth filmed in Siberia?

From The Sun: "The animal – thought to have mostly died out roughly 4,000 years ago – was apparently filmed wading through a river in the freezing wilds of Siberia.

The jaw-dropping footage was caught by a government-employed engineer last summer in the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug region of Siberia, it is claimed"

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4116326/Woolly-mammoth-spotted-in-Siberia.html

Here is the footage:

There have been a few alleged Mammoth sightings in the former Soviet Union over the last hundred years or so:

In the late 1800s there were rumors of Mammoth encounters from Siberian tribesmen...but it was never substantiated.

In 1946 a French diplomat stationed in Vladivostok claimed that he had met a fur trapper who had encountered Mammoth herds in the northern wilderness frequently in the 1920s.

Finally there was an alleged sighting of Mammoths from a Soviet fighter pilot during WWII.

So what is this creature? I think the question we really have to ask is why it took so long for the footage to become public. Perhaps another clever computer generated fake from an anonymous artist...

Until Next Time,

Pastor Swope

What is a Demon? Part 1: Etymology

A new Examiner post, which is a modification of a story I did here. I will follow up with 2 more parts later this week and next. But the first part is from my blog: What is a demon? Etymology.

Where do we get the word "demon" from and how does the definition impact what we know about malevolent spirits? Read more at the Examiner here: http://www.examiner.com/paranormal-in-pittsburgh/what-is-a-demon-part-1-etymology