For Curse-O-Meter testing today we talk about alien visitations during the Year of the Humanoids.

But before that, we talk about a very famous haunted house up for auction, a man who claims to have the remains of a bigfoot, and what happens when airport security finds human remains in your luggage.

THE NEWS:

Human Remains in Luggage

Bigfoot’s Body on Display

Conjuring House up for Auction

TRANSCRIPT:

Speaker 1: You know what this is, don’t you? This is voodoo. Nonsensical research and experimentation. Witchcraft. You don’t believe me, do you? The cult is full of superstition mysticism. We’re scientists. All this talk of scientific espionage. It’s simple, that’s what it is. That’s your imagination, I think, my imagination.

Speaker 2: It’s not, I tell you. Here, I know what it is. It’s here.

Chris: Probably Cursed.

Sheryl: Welcome, Probably Cursed listeners. For Curse-O-Meter Testing today, we talk about alien visitations during the year of the humanoids. But before that, we talk about a very famous haunted house up for auction. A man who claims to have the remains of a bigfoot. And what happens when airport security finds human remains in your luggage? I’m Probably Cursed Host. Sheryl?

Chris: Now I’m your Probably Cursed Host, Chris. And this is the day after Halloween, so hope you all had a great Halloween.

Sheryl: I, even though we’re recording this, like, way in the future of Halloween, I know Chris and I had a great Halloween.

Chris: It’s true. We are actively preparing for Halloween at the same time as recording this.

Sheryl: For our listeners who don’t know us very well, we’re actively preparing for Halloween starting in August, typically. So it’s been a couple months.

Chris: There’s Christmas people and then there’s Halloween people and we are the latter. So as we do with every episode, we calibrate the Lord Carnarvon Curse-O-Meter, the fantabulous AI machine that tells us the Cursedness of all things. Before we give it the main topic, we calibrate it with stories from recent news articles just to make sure everything’s working properly. We take three news stories. Sheryl will give it the first story now.

Sheryl: So this news story is titled CBP Officer at Florida Airport discovers human skull and bones in luggage. Pastor claims ritual use. This is from September 19th by Sergio Candido for CBS News Miami. What began as a routine baggage check at the Tampa International Airport ended with US Customs officers unwrapping something far darker, a foil wrapped bundle of bones, including part of a human skull.

Chris: It’s suspicious that this was wrapped in foil like leftovers from a restaurant?

Sheryl: I mean, there’s nothing. Yeah, I don’t know why you would do that.

Chris: Maybe it’s how you transport bones in your luggage.

Sheryl: Maybe that’s how you keep the soul inside the bones.

Chris: Oh yeah, give it a metal prison. Tin foil prison.

Sheryl: Officers made the shocking discovery when a passenger declaring just 10 cigars was found carrying a bag containing human remains. Agricultural specialists initially flagged the travelers belonging for prohibited plants, undeclared cigars and other items. Inside a foil wrapped duffel bag, officers discovered bones including part of a human skull. The passenger told CBP that the human remains were for ritual use. Customs and Border Protection Director of Field Operations Carlos C. Martel emphasized that the case highlights the unpredictable nature of international travel inspections. At the Customs and Border Protection, we never know what baggage may hold, but smugglers should know that we’ll always have a bone to pick. He said on a post on X.

Chris: Very punny, Martel.

Sheryl: Well done, sir. I hope he listens to this podcast. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention require specific documentation when human remains are brought into the United States, depending on whether they are embalmed, cremated, or if the person died from an infectious disease.

Chris: You can’t just get on an airplane even if your body is dead without papers. That is correct. You need identification. That’s what a zombies attack in the air.

Sheryl: That’s right. In most cases, a death certificate stating the cause of death must accompany the remains along with official export and import clearances. I wonder what they thought diseases, like what diseases would be on the bone that you could still get now, though. Yeah. Something to think about. Salmonella? Radiation poisoning. Oh, that’s why it was an aluminum foil.

Chris: Oh yeah, it protected from the radiation. Yeah.

Sheryl: Federal rules also require that non-cremated remains be shipped in leak-proof containers to prevent the spread of potential pathogens, even when infectious disease is not listed as the cause of death. Public health agencies warn that blood and body fluids may pose risk to handlers.

Chris: Yeah, you don’t want to get that on your hands and, I don’t know, get an itch in your eye or pick your nose.

Sheryl: But it was just bones. Like, I know CDC is like, hey, this could have been dangerous, but I don’t know. It’s bones.

Chris: Maybe it’s a slippery slope thing. Maybe. You let one guy slip through with bones and then other people are like bringing bones with a little bit of gristle on and then later on everyone’s flaunting the rules.

That’s fair. Thanks, Sheryl, for that news story. I will input the second news story titled, Searching for Bigfoot at the 2025 New York State Fair.

This is from August 22nd by Steve Featherstone for CRQs.com. Bigfoot is real. And for the price of admission to the 2025 fair, you can see his dead body. Bigfoot’s preserved corpse rests in a plexiglass and plywood coffin on the first floor of the horticulture building.

Sheryl: That seems like the wrong place to keep him. He has nothing to do with horticulture.

Chris: Yeah, at least I don’t think big feet plant crops or raised flowers.

Sheryl: The exhibit, run by Charles Snake Stewart, is decorated like a basement from the 1970s, the period of peak Bigfoot hysteria. Wood paneling, mood lighting, spooky soundtrack, and William Shatner on TV talking in grave tones about Bigfoot from a script Stewart paid him to read. Wow, this man has a lot of money. Either that or Shatner’s super desperate.

Chris: Maybe a little bit of both. Okay. They do go into how he managed this later on in the article. William Shatner, one of our good old Canadian actors of extreme ability. He was pretty easy to get, Stewart said about Shatner. I have a friend who’s related to him, and plus he’s into the paranormal sci-fi world.

Sheryl: For those listeners who could not see me squint, I don’t believe it.

Chris: The Shatner’s into the paranormal? The sci-fi world. Oh yeah.

Sheryl: He had some qualms about being a Star Trek cast member for a little while.

Chris: He wrote Tech World. Okay. And he got turned into a TV show. Okay. I can’t remember if he was in Earth or not though. Never show it. It’s 90s sci-fi. It’s kind of a mixed bag of cool and weird ideas. Executed strangely. How did Stewart get the specimen? Last October, Stewart was back country camping in the Adirondacks north of Old Forge when he traced a foul stench to Bigfoot’s rotting corpse. He took Bigfoot’s body to a garage in Saranac, where his friend who dabbled in taxidermy gutted the creature. Months later, Stewart drove his disemboweled Bigfoot to Rochester to air out at his uncle’s house. Now, Dak, as Stewart has nicknamed him, is on public view for the first time at the fair. Stewart wants to raise enough money to have the body scientifically authenticated as a Neanderthal human hybrid.

Sheryl: So wait, if he doesn’t get those results, he doesn’t want to fundraise anymore? I’m confused. I guess so. Because like, I feel like there would be scientists that would be like, yeah, I mean we’ll test the hair for you, but if it doesn’t come back as Bigfoot, then what?

Chris: I also feel like those scientists are going to be like, where are all the organs? Yeah. The bones and the blood? The rest of the tissue. This is just a pelt. The proper Cornell DNA lab has already dismissed what I’m saying, Stewart said, but I went through their veterinarian lab. And those lab results, Stewart claims, show that Dak’s DNA is mostly Neanderthal. He didn’t have the lab paperwork with him to show, but he’s thinking about releasing the information before the fair ends.

Sheryl: He’s hiring a graphic designer to make big records.

Chris: It’s true. You got to make some snappy graphics to go with those records.

Sheryl: That’s why he had it on display. He needed to make money to hire the graphic designer.

Chris: We’ll just do it as we go. Yeah. More than anything, Stewart said he’d like to prove wrong all the so-called Bigfoot experts calling him out as a fraud. Because I’m the big dog, he said, I got the Bigfoot and they can talk, talk, talk, but I’m the real deal.

I’m the real show. I’m looking forward to that and also proving my ex-wife wrong. Searching for Bigfoot, it turns out, can be hard on a marriage.

Stewart’s ex-wife didn’t even like to camp, so it was probably doomed from the start. But for now, he and his two boys are enjoying the ride. I told them you’re going to be carny kids all summer, he said. So I think they’re excited.

Sheryl: I don’t know if I feel sorry for his ex-wife or relieved that she got out of that before anything went too, too crazy. Although I wonder how she feels about her kids being stuck as carny’s all summer.

Chris: Maybe she’s okay, them just getting job experience. Maybe. Yeah, who knows. It’s good conversation starter. It’s true. You would definitely win two truths and a lie all the time.

Sheryl: Plus, imagine putting that on your resume. That would be pretty fun.

Chris: I was a Bigfoot Remains Handler for the New York World’s Fair. That is the second story. Sheryl will feed in the third and final new story for calibration.

Sheryl: Okay, the story is called Trick or Treat, The Conjuring House Listed for Auction on Halloween. This story is from September 6th by Sarah Gurnelli and Eli Sherman for CW39 Houston. The Rhode Island Farmhouse, made famous by The Conjuring Movie, has been listed for auction on none other than Halloween. The Antique Homestead in Burrillville, Burrillville? Burrillville.

Okay. The Antique Homestead in Burrillville has been listed on the auctioneer website under Mortgages for Closure Auction, which is typically a public sale where a lender sells a property because a borrower has defaulted on their mortgage payments. This antique farmhouse has become famous for historical paranormal sightings and activities the auctioneer wrote on the listing. The property, which includes 8.5 acres of land, sold last in 2022 to Bale Fire LLC for $1.5 million. The company is controlled by none other than Jacqueline Nuñes. Our old friend. Yep, this is I guess an update.

Chris: An update and a story all together in one.

Sheryl: A self-described medium who has faced a litany of issues in the town over the past year. After purchasing the property, Nunes transformed it into a tourist attraction where people could come visit the property exploring for spirits and even stay overnight for a price. But the problem started bubbling up last year when Nunes fired her employee after she said, the ghost of the farmhouse’s 19th century owner, John Arnold, told her that the manager had been stealing.

Chris: John Arnold, you be squealing, bro.

Sheryl: Not cool. The firing spurred a legal fight over back pay and resulted in former workers coming forward alleging they had also faced issues working for Nuñes. Burlville officials then revoked Nuñes’ entertainment license last November, saying there were issues with the property along with her application with the town and her interaction with local police. Nuñes however refused to cancel trips to the property that had already been scheduled, but ultimately left many visitors in a lurch and scrambling to recoup funds after spending hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars to visit the property.

Chris: Yeah, I’ve looked it up before and it’s not cheap to grant it for the whole night for…

Sheryl: Paranormal investigations. Paranormal investigations. Yeah, I mean, I guess if you’re going to make it a tourist attraction, you may as well try recoup some of that $1.5 million somehow.

Chris: Yeah, on like a 300 year old house.

Sheryl: Yeah. Nuñes also had personal disputes with Ghost Hunters TV star Jason Hawes, who ended up filing a police report alleging Nuñes was harassing him and his family. The latest development is that the home is heading for auction. However, this will likely come as welcome news to Canadian Matt Reif and YouTuber Elton Castee. The two friends recently purchased the Connecticut home of famed paranormal investigators, Ed and Lorraine Warren, and have been pushing to buy the Conjuring House. It would be cool to have our own haunted museum in Ed and Lorraine Warren’s old house. Oh yeah. Yeah. It’s already all set up.

Chris: We might have to build an extension to it over time, but…

Sheryl: It’ll work. Mm-hmm. Reif told Media last month, as a fan of the paranormal, film and history of the property and the land it sits on, I’d be honored to help preserve this beauty.

Chris: I hope he gets it. It sounds like he really wants it, and he’s already got one spooky property. You gotta add it into the Spooky Monopoly property board. Mm-hmm.

Sheryl: Plus, if anyone’s gonna know how to treat ghosts right, it’s gonna be somebody who bought an already spooky house.

Chris: I wonder, like, how much it’s going to auction for. Like, this podcast will release a day after the auction goes off. Mm-hmm. So we’ll know by then. But, like, imagine how much having the previous owner having gone insane drives up the value of the house to haunted house collectors. Mm-hmm. Because that’s, like, good, proper ghost story background.

Sheryl: Yeah. I mean, I kind of feel like people will start to wonder if they’ve gone crazy, too, which may not be in your favor, depending.

Chris: Oh, the comedian and the YouTuber? Yep. Yeah, hard to say. Mm-hmm. They’re more in the entertainment biz, so… That’s for sure. I think for at least a little while, your eccentricities can come off as more entertainment for people, and won’t be troubling for a while.

Sheryl: Let’s hope so. Well, I wish them the best of luck.

Chris: Yep. For those of you who are listening right now who are part of the auction, I hope it was an exciting time. Mm-hmm. I hope the room was just full of characters.

Speaker 1: Mm-hmm. There’ll be food and drink and ghosts, and perhaps even a few murders.

Chris: All right, we have the Curse-O-Meter nice and calibrated now. I will get it to spit out the results for the three news stories. Activating Curse-O-Meter. Please stand by.

Speaker 2: The results for the first news story about the Customs and Border Protection finding a duffel bag full of aluminum foil-wrapped human remains. The Curse-O-Meter says…

Sheryl: Definitely cursed.

Chris: What did he say? Like right up top, he said it was for… Rituals. Ritual use. Yeah. And ask yourself, if your rituals involve the use of human remains…

Sheryl: They’re probably not good rituals.

Chris: In Florida, no less. Yes. If Florida man has a duffel bag full of human bones for quote-unquote ritual use, how good is this going to be for anyone?

Sheryl: Mm-hmm. And I have so many questions that I feel like that article did not answer. Like where did those remains come from? Who are they? What did the Border Patrol people do with the items? Yeah.

Chris: Where do they put all the stuff that they confiscate?

Sheryl: I mean at least at our airport, if it wasn’t too illegal, they would auction it off, but I feel like human remains are probably not going to be auctioned off.

Chris: Florida Airport auctions off human remains.

Sheryl: I guess we’ll get an update in a few months and let you guys know.

Chris: Will the CDC like have to inspect them first just to make sure they’re not crawling with some sort of bizarre pathogen? No idea. We’ll find out if a new bone virus pandemic has taken over America. Mm-hmm. The Curse-O-Meter results for the second new story about the corpse of Bigfoot being shown off at the New York World’s Fair.

Sheryl: The Curse-O-Meter says probably benign.

Chris: Yeah. I mean he didn’t kill Bigfoot, which is a good start. He just found the body. I don’t know what Bigfoot burial rituals are, so you might be running afoul of that, but he’ll have to face Bigfoot court in order to get his comeuppance.

Sheryl: As long as he didn’t get the corpse in British Columbia because he legal to hunt Bigfoot in British Columbia.

Chris: I guess this was New York State. Maybe they got different laws over there.

Sheryl: Opposites out of the country and in a different country. Yep.

Chris: Now as a biologist yourself, if you were presented with Bigfoot remains, but they were taxidermied, how good is that as a biological specimen for you to examine to tell? Its authenticity and origin.

Sheryl: So it’s still going to be done. Like watching a lot of those Bigfoot shows, you will find that it’s easy enough for them to collect information from just the skin and the hair samples. So it should be fine. I mean, as a scientist, I’m sure they would be disappointed to not have access to the rest to see if it is actually a new species. Does it have the same organs, etc. etc. So that would probably be a little disappointing, but…

Chris: I wonder what he did with the organs. Did he just throw them in the compost bin?

Sheryl: Yeah, good question. They’re frozen in his freezer. That’s why his ex-wife left him.

Chris: Oh yeah. Who knows? It’s like, I can’t take this anymore. There’s no room for the groceries. And the results for the conjuring house going up for sale at an auction because the previous owner could not, or would not pay the mortgage anymore. Curse-O-Meter says… Probably cursed. This house is going up for auction under very suspicious, maybe somewhat sinister… Circumstances. Circumstances. Who knows what will happen to the next owner? I guess once this comes out, we’ll… At least hear what happened on day one.

Sheryl: To be fair, as we mentioned earlier, if anyone should have a haunted house, it should be the people who already own a haunted house because they should know how to do things right. So… They got the bona fides. Yeah, I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with people who own spooky properties, owning more spooky properties. I mean, that’s what your plan and my plan are.

Chris: It’s true. So, we will look at your career and imprint on it and use it ourselves. That’s right. We will buy up all the spooky properties in Edmonton, of which I think there are four or five.

And I think all but one of them are probably way outside of our price range. Yes. But that’s fine. We’ll see where life takes us. Although we didn’t win that last lottery ticket, so there’s been some setbacks already. That takes us to the end of the calibration phase of our episode. Before we go into the main topic, we’re going to make a little detour into the Probably Cursed Museum and Gift Shop to talk about the artifact dropping today.

Sheryl: So, today for our listeners and to add to the Probably Cursed Etsy Shop, we have artifact number 24. The Sad Clown on a Bicycle.

Chris: This is a very creepy item, even just to look at.

Sheryl: Yeah, it’s kind of unsettling. I took a picture, as I usually do with most of our cursed artifacts, to see A, if the photo develops correctly. Because one of these times it’s not going to and we’re going to have another piece of evidence to add.

Chris: The camera is going to burst into green flames and melt into a puddle with the sounds of shrieking and filling the air.

Sheryl: And then we’ll know it’s for sure cursed.

Chris: We’ll need to have a second camera taking a photo of the first camera.

Sheryl: But in this case, what Google told me is that this doll is from the 1980s. So, I could only find a couple of them online. There aren’t really that many. It’s kind of got like a black, its head is painted black on the top. And it’s got blue eyes with like a tear drop on its face. It kind of looks like a gang sign, if I’m being honest. This is a gang clown. That’s a gang clown. And it’s wearing a white, I’m trying to think of what these things are called.

Chris: Like a jumpsuit? Yeah.

Sheryl: Like an Elvis suit? Yeah. So, it’s wearing a white jumpsuit with two black pom-poms down the front. The bicycle has like a stand holding it up. So, it’s kind of sideways.

Chris: It’s like riding on almost like a penny farthing. Yes. Bike. With one giant wheel in front and then a tiny wheel in the back.

Sheryl: And to make things even weirder, its feet are twist tied onto the pedals.

Chris: He’s trapped. He’s forever pedaling.

Sheryl: Yeah. He will continue to pedal till the end of time. If you like this creepy clown on a bicycle for your very own. And we know you do. Mm-hmm. You can head on down to our probably cursed Etsy shop at probablycursed.etsy.com.

Chris: There you will see this artifact along with other artifacts that are still up for sale. Unless someone has gone through and bought them all before November 1st when this episode drops. Please buy them all. Yes. We’re running out of room. All the creepy objects are just piling up into creepy drifts.

Sheryl: Plus Chris and I would like to quit our J jobs at some point and start up our museum.

Chris: Running a creepy museum is a full time job of its own.

Sheryl: Plus our nieces are getting slightly uncomfortable coming over to our house and seeing the creepy, creepy dolls in our basement. That part I’m okay with. I just like how last time they were over the ones said that they’ll have nightmares for weeks after looking at the dolls.

Chris: That’s right. Yeah. I should give her a call and be like, tell me about your nightmares. You promised for weeks.

Sheryl: We should just give it to her for her birthday.

Chris: Oh yeah. Oh man. Would she just run away screaming right there?

Sheryl: Yeah. She’d probably just look at you and be like, but why?

Chris: And then I will tell her. It’s your problem now. And then I run away from the room. It chose you. It’s bound to you now. Our poor nieces. Our poor nieces will be rich with experience.

Sheryl: For our haunted house update that we usually do. Spooky music time. Okay. Last week, Freddie was sleeping at the bottom of the stairs like he normally does. And he kind of sat up and looked into the kitchen and all of a sudden. His ears and his tail went down and he sulked away to the other side of the room. So I have no idea what he saw, but it was like a very weird reaction.

Chris: Yeah, he was just, I don’t know, he felt like he had to leave the area. Like it was no good.

Sheryl: And he came to like sit down and I looked at him and I was like, hey, you okay buddy? And he just looked super sad and scared, so I don’t know what happened.

Chris: He saw something we could not. I wonder what a ghost could do that would make him that sad.

Sheryl: I mean, we have brought up in previous episodes that we’re pretty sure one of the ghosts keep poking him because when he’s lying on the floor, he’ll like jump up and run away with his tail down and his ears down.

Chris: So perhaps maybe it was just making a poking action at him. Yes. And then he’s like, I got the message.

Sheryl: Aha, he moved. Who knows, but our poor dog is getting the brunt of it.

Chris: So yeah, we would let the dog tell if he tell the story if he could.

Sheryl: But he’s also been super clingy in the morning since then.

Chris: So that is our spooky update for today’s episode. Now we head over onto the main topic. Ever since childhood, we’ve been taught to be wary of strangers. In our own cozy communities, we regularly encounter outsiders and we always seem to know when someone isn’t from around here.

But in the latter half of 1973, outsiders from a place or places from far beyond visited our world. Today, I’m going to speak about the year of the humanoids. Aren’t we all humanoids? We are.

Okay. It’s a sort of defined humanoid. It’s sort of the shape. So two arms, two legs, head on top.

Okay. So that is the humanoid form. There’s names for like, I don’t know, Freddy’s like a a canoid form or something.

I mean, he’s a quadruped but yeah, but like somewhat more dog shape. Okay. Because like birds are bipeds, but they’re not humanoids. Right. Because they’re, I guess their heads are on the front and their tails are in the back and their back is on the top.

Sheryl: Would humanoids classify like monkeys and gorillas? Yep. Okay. Yep.

Chris: Or humanoid shaped robots. Okay. Bears when they’re standing up, humanoid. Yep. My source for today’s episode is a 1976 report by David Webb for the Center of UFO Studies, in which is a compiled list of firsthand reports of alien sightings. His reason for the report is his belief that 1973 was the largest wave of extraterrestrial sightings in history.

Some sources contend it still is the largest wave. His report does go into his analysis of the types of aliens witnessed, their technology and other UFO waves that had happened historically. But I’m mainly going to recount the sightings in the report from this year, the 1973. Okay. But first, Sheryl, you’ve heard of the, you’ve heard of close encounters before, right?

Sheryl: I mean, close encounters with the third kind is a fantastic movie. Yep.

Chris: So there are actually five levels of close encounters. I can go through them here. I don’t know if you want to guess what they are if I read off the levels.

Sheryl: I think I have some vague idea. Sure, I’ll guess. Level one would be seeing a UFO. That’s correct. Level two would be being brought up into the spacecraft.

Chris: You’re jumping ahead a few levels. Okay. Close encounter of the second kind is when a UFO is seen and it leaves behind physical evidence. Okay. So like scorch marks, tracks, impressions on the ground.

Sheryl: Just because the movie close encounter of the third kind, I’m going to say abduction. Again, jumping ahead.

Chris: Jumping ahead. The third kind, a UFO, and its occupants are just observed. All right. So a lot of the stories from this report are of the third kind, but there’s also kinds of the fourth kind and fifth kind. Okay. So the fourth kind witnesses communicate with the occupants of the UFO by normal or telepathic means. And the fifth kind, that’s where all of your alien objections happen.

Sheryl: Well then why didn’t they call that movie close encounters of the fifth kind?

Chris: I don’t know the history of it. The current scale is actually an expanded scale that only went up to three in the first place. Okay. So originally it was just a three level scale. Okay. And then someone else was like, well, you know, you kind of got to separate all of the actual encounters you have with the aliens after you see the UFO.

That’s fair. So they decided they would have one where it’s like you just communicate with the aliens and one where the aliens take you out for a little late night probing. Take your samples, maybe make an alien human hybrid baby, all that good stuff.

Sheryl: That’s fair. Okay. I get it now.

Chris: So yeah, the the report is stories that cover all of these to some degree. And there’s a lot of stories in the report. So I won’t cover all of them, but I will talk about the more sensational and entertaining ones.

Let’s begin. So in in Joff’s town, New Hampshire, a couple were awakened by a brushing sound against their house. They went to look and saw two self luminous four to five foot tall beings in their backyard. They were wearing silver suits and silver boots with little upturned pose. They had oversized pointed ears, dark egg shaped eye holes and large noses.

One held a flashlight like object while the other one picked things from the ground and put them in a silver bag. The family dog was ordered to attack them and it obeyed making some lunges at them, but then walked back and lay down on the kitchen floor whining. Sounds like our dog. This is exactly what would happen if our dog encountered aliens.

Sheryl: Yeah, 100%. Although there’s part of me that says they had green faces in silver suits with upturned toes. Yep. Sounds like a Christmas elf.

Chris: Oh, maybe maybe is the elf on the shelf. Yeah. Stealing things from their backyard. Yeah. Yeah, who knows? I guess they got summer jobs. Another story in Ashburn, Georgia. A woman was driving on the interstate when her engine breaks and steering quit after she had pulled the car to the side of the road. A small metallic man appeared. It had a bubble dome head with rectangular eye openings. The head moved like a robot. From the elbows down, the arms were narrow and wrinkled like a chicken’s legs. It moved around the car and disappeared. Afterwards, her car engine billowed smoke and the hood became intensely hot.

Sheryl: Yeah, I, the image now, at least for me, once you said chicken legs, is I imagined it. This is silver chicken with rectangle eyes, but you said humanoid. So I guess that doesn’t count anymore.

Chris: Maybe it’s a chicken standing very up straight. In Sydney, North Carolina, over the course of a week, there were a series reports of a monster with large, red, glowing eyes, gray face, long hair, pointed ears, and a hooked nose. It was dressed in a brown shirt and black pants and had a small brown cap on the head. It walked with a limp and one hand was missing. It was said to leave no tracks and to leap 50 to 60 feet in a single bound. It had a metal medallion on its chest, which was said to be used for communicating and disappearing. I’ll mention at this point that a lot of these stories don’t really have an ending. It’s just the sighting.

Sheryl: So I mean, again, for for documenting my reaction, the description there sounds to me like Tolkien elves from Lord of the Rings, silvery skin, not so much, the gray skin, not so much, but the rest of it.

Chris: And the medallion and the missing hand?

Sheryl: Yeah. I mean, there’s nothing saying that elves couldn’t lose their hand.

Chris: That’s true. They did make sharp blades. I better happen more often than Tolkien let on.

Sheryl: I mean, there was there was a war in Middle Earth. I’ve not read the books, but I’ve seen the movie. I know there was a war there at one point. Who’s to say somebody didn’t lose their hand?

Chris: Maybe we need to zoom in on the next time we watch it, just to see everybody’s hands. Yep. We’ll do a count. And if we come to an odd number, we know someone’s missing.

Yep. So as weird as those encounters were, some are stranger. And some people had up close and uncomfortable encounters with the aliens. In Utah, a woman was abducted and given a medical examination on board a craft inside a big bright room with lots of lights and buttons and glass tubes containing liquid. She observed four or five humanoids on the craft and at least two human beings. The humanoids did not communicate with her and were coldly efficient. They were four to five feet tall, had no noses, long fish like mouths, orange hands, or they might have been wearing gloves, with two or three big claws or fingers that open like a clasp. They had large oval eyes that wrapped around the side of the head with big black peoples that moved a lot.

Sheryl: This is what happens when you eat too much lobster right before bed. Perhaps.

Chris: This one does sound most close to like the common great aliens you hear today, except for the claw hands. Yep. And the orange. Maybe this was the lobster variety, the Zoidberg variety.

That’s right. Of the humans she saw, one was bald and about 55 years old and he talked with her and helped her during the exam. She was hooked up to a machine, probed with needles, given a blood pressure test and a gynecological exam. At the end they gave her a shot to make her forget, but I guess if she’s in the report the shot did not take. Yep, apparently not.

Another similar experimentation case from Amro, Wisconsin. A man was awakened by a high-pitched noise after midnight. Suddenly his room was lit up with a bright orange red glow and three shortish humanoids materialized in front of him.

They had bald heads, grayish white wrinkled skin and rounded ears and moved around mechanically. The man passed out, then came to on the floor, propped against the wall unable to move. The entities were examining him with an oval object that showed the bones of his legs when it passed over them. He had a severe headache and passed out again as a being reached toward him. He next awakened in the early morning on the floor alone. The lights were on in the bedroom and the bedsheets were folded neatly back. They made his bed? That’s what it sounds like. Interesting. They were probably like, I feel bad what we did for this guy.

I’m just gonna make his bed and I’ll make up for everything. But not everyone was a victim of the humanoids. Some people did go on the offensive. In Danielsville, Georgia, a silver oval-shaped object landed on the highway, forcing a man to suddenly hit on his brakes. Once at a full stop, he observed appearing under the craft two small four-foot-tall beings with reddish faces, white hair, clad in silver suits. And because this story happened in America, the man grabbed his gun, stepped halfway out of his car, and fired several shots. The beans turned around, re-entered the craft, and took off with a whooshing sound.

Sheryl: Let’s be honest, the same thing would happen in Alberta. That’s true. Yeah, it’s not unique to the US. As a matter of fact, in Edmonton, people are very, very aggressive drivers, and I can see the guy just wanting to shoot at someone for cutting them off.

Chris: But Edmonton has more of a stabbing reputation. Yes, that’s true. As opposed to shooting each other.

Sheryl: Yes, that is very true.

Chris: But you’re right. I think if aliens were to visit Canada, and one of them got shot, is probably a good chance it’ll be in Alberta. Yeah. Other humanoids received a similar welcome in Uniontown, Pennsylvania. A young farmer and two youths were approaching a bright white, huge domed object sitting in a field making a lawnmower-like sound. They soon saw two creatures in the distance moving along a fence, described as being seven and eight feet tall, with long dark gray hair and greenish yellow eyes. Their arms hung almost to the ground and both seemed to communicate with whining sounds. Once again, because America, rifle shots were fired at the larger one. In response, it moved its right hand up, and the big UFO disappeared along with the noise. The creatures then slowly made their way into the woods and were not seen again.

Sheryl: I wonder how easy it is to hide in the woods in that part of the states. It’s a good question. Yeah.

Chris: Bigfoot’s doing it. There. Wisconsin. No, wait, this was Georgia. Georgia. No, wait, Pennsylvania. If you live in Pennsylvania, tell us how easy it is to disappear in the woods when you’re eight feet tall.

Sheryl: Yeah, I feel like never to be seen again. I don’t know. It’d be hard to hide. I guess it’s at night, but maybe the crouch. Yeah, maybe they sent the craft to go do something else and they took off running and just had the craft pick them up someplace else later.

Chris: What can only hope? Once we do make contact with the greater Galactic Federation, we’ll be able to get the other side of the story. Hope so. This will be the first thing I ask about.

Yep. Now, most of the stories are from America, which is pretty acceptable. This is where the UFO study group was located, where the man is from. But similar events were occurring worldwide. There’s stories from Quebec here in Canada, there’s also some stories from Colombia, Australia, the Netherlands. But there are a couple of stories from France that were particularly dramatic. The first from Draguignon, France.

France is the easy part to say. For youths, in two cars drove up a small mountain to investigate a UFO seen earlier by a friend and his girl. But on their way, instead of the UFO, they encountered a being silhouetted all in a diffuse white glow. As it approached the use, it was joined by three more similar creatures. They were wearing one piece suits with a waist high red light and wore square helmets with luminous rectangular eye slots. One of them wore a gas mask with a veil covering the face.

Their gait was slow and mechanical and they conversed with each other with modulated whistles. The youths tried to drive away, but a powerful white light beam affected the cars’ ability to drive. As the beings reached the two vehicles, they swung one of the cars sideways across the road and back again.

The other car was shaken as a set parked on the road. All the while, the youths could feel heat and smell the scent of burning. So they got hazed by aliens, I think?

Sheryl: Yeah, maybe a bunch of teenage aliens just trying to pick on people.

Chris: Yep, picking on the humans. In Puy Verde, Sheryl is the uh the French language.

Sheryl: Don’t worry Chris, people don’t expect you to be to say French things correctly. You said quebec, not Quebec.

Chris: Oh I did, and I know better for that one.

Sheryl: Well, it’s okay. That’s… You can fix it later.

Chris: That’s true, I can just record it. In Puy Verde, France, a motorcyclist en route to work suddenly encountered a dazzling bright light on the road ahead. As he got close, his engine cut out, but now he was close enough to see a luminous ovoid object with smoke underneath hovering just above the ground. A being suddenly appeared and walked up to the motorcyclist, putting its left hand on his shoulder and offered reassuring words.

Sheryl: Interesting, what kind of reassuring words?

Chris: It didn’t say, it’s like, they’re there.

Sheryl: I’m impressed, they can speak French.

Chris: What is the French equivalent of, they’re there. Calmebou, calm down. Okay.

Sheryl: That’s the closest thing I can think of, I don’t know if there’s a… Sadly my French was a little lacking these days.

Chris: You’ve never had to calm a motorcyclist down. Have not. The being was two meters tall, so just a little bit taller than me, and thin, wearing a uniform like aluminum, a large helmet rested on his shoulders with a snorkel-like tube on the right side. His face was like a human face covered with a nylon stocking with slitted eyes. He carried something like a pistol in his right hand pointed at the ground. The being asked the motorcyclist where he was going, and he replied, to my job. After that, the being then said, he must return to the object and told the motorcyclist not to inspect it too closely. Once the being was back inside, it rose vertically with a sound like a swarm of bees, then moved off horizontally. The motorcycle then again started normally.

Sheryl: That shows just how little the aliens know about people. If you tell a person not to do something, 100% they’re going to do it.

Chris: Yeah, to lug my car, man. Yeah. I’m looking. So those are the most dramatic sightings, but there are plenty of other weird ones, like in Wataga, Tennessee, circular copper-colored UFO hover just off the ground while a six-foot being reached out of a doorway and tried to grab two children. At a two claw-like hands and blinking eyes, at least six other reports of UFOs came from the same area on the same day.

Wow. So we’re just trying to grab kids. That’s not fair. I guess if you wanted a specimen, you maybe grab the little ones first in case you’re worried you can’t handle the big ones.

Still not fair. In Athens, Georgia, a student at the university witnessed a vague purple craft nearby her housing. From it emerged a being with tentacle-like protrusions about the head and hands of three or four fingers. It had several odd objects that it wore on a belt and appeared to take readings with them. The being completely ignored the student during the 30 minutes it stood there until it left in the vessel.

Sheryl: What did it do though for those 30 minutes?

Chris: Just I guess they’re just taking readings.

Sheryl: Picking up some rocks.

Chris: Maybe it was a alien botanist and not an alien zoologist and just couldn’t care less about the animals. That’s fair. So what are we to make of this wave of alien visitations? It’s easy to dismiss as imagination or things seen on TV. However, the main preoccupation of people at this time, at least in Americans’ minds, was the Watergate scandal and the impeachment of Richard Nixon. And the popular science fiction of this time mainly dealt with the dangers of human invention and the post-apocalypse. The big movies of the time were Westworld, Planet of the Apes and Soiling Green. So not really alien movies. So if we can take the story seriously, what does the massive wave of sightings mean? Maybe a number of extraterrestrial civilizations suddenly became aware of Earth life and hopped into their spacecraft to take a look. Maybe grab a few human children pets to take back.

That’s right. It might explain the variety of appearances of the beings and their spacecraft. And as for the cessation of visits, except for the commonly seen variety of great aliens ever since then, perhaps there’s an embargo now? Maybe we are now in a preserve. Who knows? But at least for now, we can have the Curse-O-Meter tell us the cursedness of the 1973 year of the humanoids. Activating a Curse-O-Meter. Please stand by.

Speaker 2: And the Curse-O-Meter says the year of the humanoids is probably cursed.

Sheryl: It sounds like there are way too many alien abductions for it to be a coincidence. There’s definitely something that was going on. Yep.

Chris: Not only that, there was like property damage, like that one lady’s car, like started smoking, got hot. Those teens in France got hazed.

Sheryl: Can you imagine going to your insurance company and being like, look, aliens damaged my car?

Chris: Could you imagine being late to work and be like, what happened? And like this alien stopped and my motorcycle wouldn’t work. And then he said reassuring words and then I was late.

Sheryl: Also plausible. I think my manager would just send me home and tell me to take the rest of the day off.

Chris: That’s fair. I hope that’s what happened to this man in this case.

Sheryl: I hope so too. Or he just called in sick on his own.

Chris: Definitely it caused a lot of mayhem and certain areas, particularly in areas that had sightings go on for like a week. I didn’t include it, but there was like one small town where like basically the same, it was almost like a boxy robot type thing kept appearing at like the side of the road scaring people. Oh, interesting. The police chief was going after it and there was like a big hunt for it and was seen like a few other places, but they never caught it. It probably went back home after it.

Sheryl: Finished what it was doing. Yep. It was a great story, Chris. Thank you for sharing it.

Chris: Thank you. I thought something a little bit lighter since the last cult leader episode that I had done.

Sheryl: Yeah, a little dark.

Chris: Yeah, when I first heard of this, I thought it might have just been one species of aliens visiting earth and causing all sorts of mayhem. I didn’t realize it was multiple species. Yeah, all different kinds with different appearances of shapes and sizes. I thought it was quite interesting and quite entertaining.

Sheryl: Yeah, no, it was a great story. I definitely enjoyed the various aspects and how it seemed to travel around the world. I imagine there were more stories from other places as well that just didn’t get included.

Chris: There was. And a lot of them were like some people woke up in the middle of the night, looked out their window, saw a craft sitting in the field or in their backyard with beings moving back and forth.

And that was the end of the story. You can read the Year of the Humanoid report yourself. The PDF is pretty much easy to find for free online. It’s been around for a long, long time. So it’s been shared. I think I got it off of archive.org.

So if you’re more interested in the other reports, definitely take a look. Perfect. That brings us to the end of today’s episode. Join us again on December 1st when Sheryl tells us her next episode topic.

Sheryl: In the meantime, you can check us out on our social media, which is Instagram, BlueSky, Facebook, TikTok.

Chris: Yep, Tumblr. Thank you. Also YouTube.

Sheryl: Yep. As I mentioned before, you can head on over to our Etsy shop to look at cursed items, including the sad gang clown on a bicycle. Sad gang clown. Yeah, that’s a mouthful.

Chris: Yep. If you have creepy, cursed, haunted items of your own that you need to get rid of and you need a willing recipient to give it away to, we’d be happy to take it off of your hands. You can email us at probablycursepodcast@gmail.com. If you also want a good assortment of all of our links, you can also head to our website at probablycursed.net. We have links to all of the artifacts on there as well. All of our show notes, also transcripts of the show if you just like to follow along in text form. But that brings us to the end of today’s episode. Until next month, stay spooky. Stay spooky, everyone.