By Tim Binnall
The Roswell incident, Bigfoot in Ohio, and strange Christian history were among the fascinating topics explored on Coast to Coast AM this past week. And, here at the C2C website, we told you about escaped hamsters grounding a plane at a Spanish airport, a strange serial vandal in Britain, and a Senate hearing on UFOs. Check out our round-up of highlights from the past week ... In Coast You Missed It.
The stranger side of Christian history was explored on Monday night's program as author Michael Lichens shared odd accounts involving saints, weird miracles, and demons. He recounted one peculiar tale wherein an axe-toting St. Nicholas was enlisted to help a town that had fallen victim to a possessed tree that terrified residents by unleashing an unsettling screech. Of the more modern saints, he pointed to Padre Pio, who passed away in 1968 and was said to possess the power of bilocation, wherein he could simultaneously appear in two different places. Lichens also talked about the recent case of the seemingly incorrupt nun who was exhumed in Missouri last year.
UFOs were the talk of Congress yet again this past week as the Senate held a hearing wherein the head of the Pentagon's UAP program provided an update on their work investigating the phenomenon. Dr. Jon Kosloski noted that the group found prosaic explanations for many of the cases they have received and that they have yet to find any evidence of extraterrestrials. That said, he did provide details on a handful of reports wherein the unidentified object was so fantastic in its appearance or behavior that they were left scratching their heads as to what it could have been. Other UFO items from the past week included new details on the object shot down over Canada in February 2023 and videos of odd anomalies seen over New York City and a Mexican volcano.
Could the legendary Bigfoot be lurking in the forests of Ohio? This intriguing possibility was explored on Saturday night's program by researcher Mike Miller, who detailed his ongoing search for Sasquatch and other curious cryptids in the Buckeye State. He recounted how his team of investigators have had unusual experiences while exploring the wilderness, such as having rocks mysteriously thrown at them and hearing unsettling animal sounds that were unlike any known creature. Miller mused that Bigfoot appears territorial yet peaceful unless it feels threatened, which will provoke a powerful defensive reaction from the monstrous cryptid.
This past week featured two strange stories centered around large groups of animals causing chaos. First, in Spain, an airport was forced to ground a plane after it was discovered that dozens of hamsters being shipped by a pet store had managed to escape their container. Fearing that the rodents might chew critical wires in the $105 million Airbus 320 in which they roamed, workers spent four days painstakingly collecting all of the critters from the aircraft's nooks and crannies until it was safe to take to the skies again. Meanwhile, in Thailand, police officers were forced to take refuge within their headquarters after hundreds of monkeys escaped their enclosure and overtook a city for several hours.
The iconic Roswell incident was revisited on Thursday night's program with Don Schmitt reflecting on his decades-long investigation into the case. Cautiously optimistic about the change in the government's stance on UFOs, he lamented that none of the key Roswell witnesses are alive today to tell their remarkable stories. That said, Schmitt revealed that he recently spoke to an 87-year-old woman who handled a piece of the mysterious wreckage when she was a child. He pointed to the profound secrecy surrounding the event as an indication that whatever crashed in Roswell was far more significant than a simple weather balloon.
The weirdest story of the week came to us by way of Britain, where a town is struggling to deal with a persistent vandal who has specifically targeted a solitary street crossing button for the last two years. Officials in the community of Tonbridge lament that they have spent thousands of pounds fixing the damaged devices since the ridiculous reign of terror began. Making the case all the more curious, the most recent incident saw the miscreant leave behind a rather unsettling message that was constructed like a ransom note and informed town officials that they had only themselves to blame for the trashed buttons because "you now [sic] what you did in 2012."
Coast Insiders can check out all this week's shows as well as the last seven years of C2C programs in our enormous archive. Not a Coast Insider yet? Sign up today.