Tag Archives: cryptids

Invasion on Chestnut Ridge (2017)

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January 30

Today, the penultimate day of the 2025 Genre-ary, I watched a documentary from the series Small Town Monsters. I have seen other episodes from Small Town Monsters before and they are usually a fairly well done look at these unexplained phenomenon. Invasion on Chestnut Ridge is yet another solid doc dealing with the paranormal.

Chestnut Ridge is an area of Pennsylvania where there have been numerous unexplained reports of everything from bigfoot to UFO sighting to giant birds with massive wingspans.

According to the doc, it seemed as if there were a rush of reports during 1973/74 with all kinds of weird things going on. The doc had witnesses giving their stories, including things like UFO sightings and bigfoot encounters, all of which are sufficiently unnerving. One wonders what these people actually saw. Many of them seemed to be reasonable and decent people (Admittedly, there was the one guy with a 2nd Amendment shirt on where the number two was a snake).

I have always been more willing to believe in many things. I do think there is (or was) something called a bigfoot. I am not opposed to people from outer space (though I am not sure if they are able to travel here), but above all else, I enjoy the stories. Small Town Monsters does an excellent job of presenting these “out there” accounts in a enjoyable way.

There was one funny moment. They were interviewing a witness who had seen a thunderhawk and they were blurring out the wording on his shirt. However, the man bent down to describe how the bird had been sitting, and the blur did not go with him. We saw that it was a Steelers shirt. I laughed out loud at that. I wonder why they couldn’t get the blur to follow him down. I know that was a minor thing in the doc, but I thought it was funny.

The doc also detailed the Kecksburg UFO crash in 1965. Something crashed in the woods near Kecksburg, Pennsylvania and witnesses went to see. It was a metallic object shaped like a walnut and that the military showed up and removed it. Of course, specifics are shaky and, like all UFO sightings, it is hard to determine what it was that these people saw.

Admittedly, the doc does not provide any concrete evidence of any of the stories they tell about, outside of the eye witness accounts from many year prior. I still found these stories intriguing and entertaining at least. Are any of them real? Who knows. It is one of those unsolved mysteries.

Bigfoot: Fear in the Woods (2020)

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January 16

There are a ton of documentaries about the existence of or lack thereof of the legendary creature known as Bigfoot. I have seen several docs on the topic. Being a Bigfoot aficionado, I enjoy the docs and shows of the creature. So this Genre-ary, I found a doc on HBO MAX called Bigfoot: Fear in the Woods, a part of a doc series called Shock Docs, and I wanted to put it on the list.

I do believe in the existence of Bigfoot, but there are some way out there theories about the cryptid. Some of those theories were given some mention on this doc, but, the ideas that were more odd were not given much depth. The idea that Bigfoot is an alien from outer space or were violent cannibalistic animals that live in caves beneath the earth’s surface is mentioned, but there is not a ton of details presented to support such bizarre ideas.

However, there are some cool things in the doc that are much more possible. I did enjoy the discussion on the first plaster casts that were made in Bluff Creek, California by a man named Ray Wallace. Some of this section was a fascinating piece of this documentary.

Even more intriguing was the information about 300 elongated skulls that had been discovered in a grave in Paracus, Peru in 1928. It was initially believed that the skulls came from tribal head binding, but the absence of the sagittal suture, “a dense, fibrous connective tissue joint between the two parietal bones of the skull.” (Wikipedia), have made some wonder what the true nature of these skulls were. This whole section about the Peru skulls was very interesting and made some sense.

Of course, I do not know what the doc may have left out, detail wise, in order to make their narrative fit. Still, this was a neat concept that I had not heard of before.

In the end, this doc did not provide anything startlingly new or mind blowing, but it did keep the concept of Bigfoot alive and well, even if there is no true evidence that such a creature ever existed.