Tiny Mummies - Part Two!

As a follow-up to my original post on Aleshenka located here, I bring you today the stories of two more small alienesque mummified creatures: Pedro the Mummy and the Atacama skeleton.

Meet Pedro.

Located in the Rocky Mountains, the Nimerigar are a race of little people characterized as aggressive, who liked to shoot poisoned arrows from tiny bows.  In October of 1932, while digging for gold in the San Pedro mountains of Wyoming, Cecil Mayne and Frank Carr came across a small room in which they found the mummy of a tiny person.  There was instant skepticism surrounding the mummy but x-rays were performed 18 years later in 1950 and it was discovered that there was a fully formed man-like skeleton inside.

Pedro was 14 inches tall, sitting with crossed arms and legs.  His cranium was flat and his eyes bulged and you could even see little fingernails on his fingers.  The x-rays on Pedro provided further enlightenment - several of his bones were broken including his spine, collarbone, and skull.  He also had some congealed blood at the top of his skull, insinuating a violent death.  Pedro was examined by Dr. Henry Shapiro, a biological anthropologist from the American Museum of Natural History, where it was determined that the man was approximately 65 years old at the time of his death.

Plot twist: There was a second mummy found, a female, in roughly the same area where Pedro was discovered.  This mummy was brought to Dr. George Gill for examination.  She was only four inches high and it was determined that she was a prematurely born baby or a child with anencephaly.  Dr. Gill also believed Pedro was an infant rather than an adult and that both mummies were a result of malnutrition of babies born to a tribe still adapting to the harsh conditions of the area. 

To give some more background on the Nimerigar, they lived in the San Pedro Mountains and fought constantly with the average sized humans in the area.  Apparently, when one of their own became sick or old, they were killed by their own people with a blow to the head.  The Nimerigar were believed to be bad luck to anyone who found them and are referred to as "tiny people eaters."  Many considered this all folklore and urban legend until Pedro was discovered.

Sadly, Pedro the Mummy's story ends in his disappearance.  He was purchased by Ivan T. Goodman for several thousand dollars after being shown as an attraction in a local drug store for several years.  Goodman died in 1950 and Pedro was passed on to Leonard Wadler.  Wadler died in the 1980s and Pedro has not been seen since.

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Meet Ata.

Ata was discvoered in 2003 in a deserted Chilean town in the Atacama Desert by Oscar Munoz near an abandoned church.  Munoz sold Ata to a local pub owner for the equivalent of $51.00 USD who later sold Ata to his/her current owner, Ramon Navia-Osorio.  Ata is only six inches long, with an irregularly shaped skull and two missing ribs.  It is also believed that Ata is a prematurely born fetus suffering from oxycephaly or a combination of genetic disorders.  Immunologist Garry Nolan speculated that Ata suffered from dwarfism but no genes for dwarfism were found during genetic analysis.  Of course, conspiracy theorists/ufologists have labeled Ata an alien but this speciulation is inconsistent with the human genetic material gathered during evaluation.  The film Sirius is a 2013 documentary directed by Amardeep Kaleka based upon the book Hidden Truth, Forbidden Knowledge by Steven M. Greer.  Sirius features interviews from former government officials as well as images and a DNA analysis of Ata.

I guess my overall feeling about Aleshenka, Pedro, Ata, and likely the many other little mummy aliens out there is creeped out but also quite fascinated.  More than anything, stories like these lead me to realize how easy it is to stumble across a little creature like this, near a church, in a cemetary, while gold digging in the mountains (okay, so that one's not quite as plausible.)  What would I do if I stumbled across one of these creatures?  Scream and run away?  Put it in a box and poke holes in the top?  Nudge it with a stick?  (Does this seem insensitive?)  I mean, what would you do?  Regardless, I can't say what my response would be if I ran across my own version of Aleshenka/Pedro/Ata, but best believe if I did find one, I wouldn't sell it to a pub owner for $51.00.


-Amanda


Source 1
Source 2

NOAA Unidentified Sounds

NOAA stands for the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration and they have a great habit of capturing some creepy sh*! on their autonomous hydrophones.  I already have a pretty large fear of the deepest darkest parts of the ocean, the creatures which may lay below, able to survive places man cannot venture to, lurking around down there unbeknownst to the human race, huge, many teeth, slow or fast-moving....*shudder*  Below I have inserted audio clips of some of the strangest and creepiest recorded unidentified sounds.  Keep in mind, these are nothing but simple sounds but when you try to picture in your mind WHAT exactly may be making these sounds...your imagination can start to unnerve you very quickly and very easily.

Upsweep

Recorded in August of 1991, Upsweep consists of a "long train of narrow-band upsweeping sounds of several seconds in duration each."  The source of Upsweep has been tracked to a location of inferred volcanic seismicity and seems to be seasonal, reaching its peaks in Spring and Autumn.  The source level was strongest in 1991 and has been declining ever since but can still be captured on the hydrophones throughout the Pacific Ocean.  Upsweep is more precisely located near Antarctica, about 2,500 miles west of the southern tip of South America.  It was originally believed that the Upsweep sound might be fin whales but this theory was debunked in 1996 when researchers argued there wasn't enough variation in the tone for it to be created biologically.

Bloop

Bloop is perhaps the most well-known unidentified sound.  At least it's the first one I heard of many years ago.  Bloop was captured in 1997.  The sound is apparently consistent with the noises generated by "icequakes" or large icebergs scraping along the ocean floor.  What's creepy about Bloop is that it is several times louder than the loudest recorded animal, the blue whale.  However, some believe that maybe Bloop is evidence of an even larger life form lurking in the depths of the oceans.  Interestingly enough, no other Bloops have been recorded since 1997.



Julia

I'm simultaneously creeped out by this and laughing beause it sounds like Chewbacca yawning before taking a nice nap.   Julia was recorded in 1999 near Antarctica.  Julia lasts 15 seconds and is said to be the sound of a large iceberg running into the seafloor.  I'm going to hold my ground that there's a really large species of underwater Chewbaccas that are just really sleepy.


Slow Down

Slow Down is pretty dang creepy to me.  Recorded in 1997, the source is believed to be an iceberg becoming grounded.  Slow Down's sound slowly decreases over the course of SEVEN MINUTES and has been picked up several times each year since first being heard in 1997, according to Wikipedia.  Apparently Slow Down is the result of the friction caused by a large sheet of ice moving over land.




Train

Recorded in 1997, Train rises to a quasi-steady frequency.  Once again, the origin is likely to be a very large iceberg grounded in the Ross Sea near Cap Adare.  Interstingly, Train was the unidentified sound I was able to gather the least amount of information on during my research.

So, lovely readers, how do you feel about these unidentified sounds?  Are they not creepy at all?  Are they slightly unnerving?  Do you believe them all to be iceberg shifts or volcanic activity or is it possible there is something else down there producing these noises?  I guess we are left only to rely on science as best we can in this situation, but if even the greatest scientists classify these sounds as "unidentified", is it possible that they could be made by something we couldn't even imagine?  *shudders again for good measure*

-Amanda

Source #1
Source #2

The Disappearance of Brandon Swanson

In 2008, 19 year old Brandon Swanson was driving home when he crashed his car into a ditch at 2:00AM.  Slightly panicked, on a dark street at night, Brandon called his parents hoping for assistance.  His parents set out to look for him, but to no avail.  They continued a 45 minute phone call with Brandon trying desperately to find him on the wooded streets of Canby, Minnesota.  At one point, Swanson claimed he could see lights and started to head towards the nearby town.  Out of nowhere, his parents heard Brandon exclaim, "Oh shit!" and the call cut off.

This is the last Brandon's parents heard from him.  Now almost seven years later, Brandon still has not come home.  After an intense search with hundreds of volunteers and 34 dogs, Brandon's car was found 120 days after his disappearance, but nothing else was ever found.  Upon finding Brandon's car, there was no evidence of foul play and his family stated that he had no reason to dissapear.  It is widely believed that Brandon slipped and fell into a nearby river but for two days after his disappearance, his phone rang, meaning if Brandon fell into the river, his phone did not fall with him.  It is also odd that the phone records show he was incorrect about his location and was actually 20 minutes away from the town he claimed he could see the lights of.

The tragedy of Brandon's disappearance is felt every day in his parent's home.  They still leave the porch light on for him, though after such a period of time with over 75 tips given to the police department but no strong leads on his whereabouts, his parents were quoted on the 5th anniversary of his disappearance as saying  "It's not that we've forgotten Brandon or anything like that.  It's just that we've searched extensively for 3 to 4 years.  It hurts."

Granted, there is a plethora of missing persons cases filed on a regular basis, none any less sad than the other, but often surrounded by a whirlwind of attention at first and then quickly forgotten when replaced by the next big news story.  It is less often that people stop to think about the families involved in these cases and how when it seems as though everyone else has forgotten about their loved one, they are reminded of them every single day without fail.  What was it that caused Brandon to exclaim "Oh shit!" that night?  Was it as simple as falling into a river (though a body was never recovered from any nearby rivers)?  Was it a criminal taking advantage of the situation?  Was there a supernatural force at play?  Was a wildlife attack possible?  There are endless questions, the answer to which we may never know.

-Amanda