Autumn's Oddities

On December 1, 2007, John Darwin walked into a West End Central London police station and calmly told an officer, “I think I’m a missing person”. This was a bold claim coming from a man who had been declared legally dead in 2003. This is the strange and twisted almost-fairytale of Canoe Man.
SOURCES
The Thief, His Wife and The Canoe: The unbelievably true story behind the ITV drama – April 14, 2022; by David Leigh
https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/drama/anne-john-darwin-what-happened/

I'm taking you on a trip around the world to investigate some of the most bizarre and frightening (in some cases funny) cryptids, creatures, monsters, ghosts, and demons. Some of the featured creatures include the Acheri, Shirime, Anansi the spider, Rompo, Dijiang, Doppelgänger, Bokknerijders, Bunyip, and Leyak.
SOURCES
http://www.flutopedia.com/refs/Rink_1889_EskimoTalesAndSongs_FP.pdf
https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Kwaku_Anansi_(Earth-7082)
Bedd Gelert: Its Facts, Fairies, and Folk-Lore (Portmadoc: Llewelyn Jenkins, 1899); D. E. Jenkins,
https://drum.lib.umd.edu/bitstream/handle/1903/20479/Kim_ResearchPaper.pdf?isAllowed=y&sequence=3
https://archive.org/details/adescriptionthr00boregoog/page/n4/mode/2up
An Encyclopedia of Fairies: Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies, & Other Supernatural Creatures Paperback – August 12, 1978; by Katharine Briggs
Encyclopedia of Norse and Germanic Folklore, Mythology, and Magic
By Claude Lecouteux
Giants, Monsters, and Dragons: An Encyclopedia of Folklore, Legend, and Myth Paperback – November 17, 2001
by Carol Rose

Happy New Year's Eve! Part one of my Urban Legends Series takes us to the Southeast Region of the U.S.: West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana.Hold on to your fried chicken and sweet tea, I'm covering everything from the Goat Man of Pope Lick to Mothman to Lake Lanier, y'all! SOURCESEncyclopedia of Urban Legends Paperback – Illustrated, November 17, 2002; book by JanHarold BrunvandGood Old Boy and the Witch of Yazoo Paperback – January 1, 1998; book by Willie Morrishttps://www.atlasobscura.com/places/pope-lick-trestle-bridgehttps://www.ncblueridge.com/great-little-blue-ridge-towns/morganton-mystery-the-brown-mountain-lightshttps://www.oxfordamerican.org/magazine/issue-113-summer-2021/the-haunting-of-lake-lanierhttps://folklife.si.edu/magazine/mothman-point-pleasant-west-virginiahttps://www.scaryforkids.com/skinned-tom/https://digitalalabama.com/alabama-ghosts-and-haunted-places/hells-gate-bridge/46067https://www.southernthing.com/julia-legare-ghost-story-2655248048.html

On Feb. 19, 2013, a maintenance worker at the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles made a gruesome discovery in the building's main water tank: the body of missing 21-year-old Canadian student, and hotel guest, Elisa Lam. Hotel guests had been complaining of foul-smelling water and low pressure, which prompted a search of the tanks. In the days prior to her disappearance, Elisa had exhibited odd behaviors, which got her removed from her shared room. Once the LAPD got involved, found footage of Elisa in the hotel elevator was released to the public and the conspiracy theories surrounding her death began. But what really happened to Elisa Lam? SOURCESVideo footage of Elisa Lam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TjVBpyTeZM Gone at Midnight: The Tragic True Story Behind the Unsolved Internet Sensation Hardcover – Illustrated, February 25, 2020; book by Jake AndersonCrime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel; Netflix Docuseries

On New Year's Day 1986, the body of 28-year-old Deborah Ann Wolfe was found at the bottom of a small irrigation pond outside her isolated cabin near Fort Bragg in North Carolina. She lived there, roughly 4 miles from the Fayetteville city limits, with her dogs. In conflicting reports, divers initially said they located her body inside a barrel. But local officials claim there was no barrel and called her death an accidental drowning.
SOURCES
https://www.fayobserver.com/story/news/2019/10/26/body-in-barrel-questions-linger-in-1985-fayetteville-drowning/2439020007/
Unsolved Mysteries (Episode #78); December 1990; Cosgrove-Meurer Productions, Inc.
https://journals.lww.com/amjforensicmedicine/Abstract/1986/12000/Bodies_Found_in_the_Water__An_Investigative.5.aspx