Join the Anomaly Archives and other great vendors for…
“…a live, immersive experience that is part late-night talk show, part Pee-wee’s Playhouse of the Damned. This variety spectacle is your gateway to the strange, the surreal, and what lurks in the shadows. Hosted by Saul Ravencraft, Austin’s own wizard provocateur, the night unfolds like a shroud.”
Friday, July 11, 2025
Doors open at 6:30pm for vendors and community.
Show starts at 7:30.
Join the Anomaly Archives and other great Orgs at this NonProfit Fair!
“Whether you’re passionate about giving back or just curious about how to get involved, this is your chance to connect with incredible local organizations doing amazing work.
Chat with reps, explore volunteer opportunities, and discover causes that speak to you!
Come hang out, get inspired, and see how you can make a difference — all in one uplifting afternoon.
“Stop by, grab a beer (or coffee) and talk about non-human intelligence, psionics and whatever you like. It’s always fun to meet other like-minded people. We aim to have positive, productive conversations.”
Join us as we celebrate 364 UnHalloweens with the first ever October 32nd event, hosted by Saul Ravencraft and friends. It’s a day-long celebration of the strange, odd, and unusual with a dose of spookiosity. Dress in costume and enjoy performances, vendors, exhibits, and fascinating discussions with local talents.
Performances and panel discussions led by Saul Ravencraft
Dance by The Seductive Bats
Discussion with Horror Film Composer, Mark Wilson
Photo opportunities with the Austin Avengers
Discussion with paranormal archivists, Anomaly Archives
Vendors
Costume Contest
Saul Ravencraft will demonstrate a Victorian Spirit Session at the end of the day
In the Meantime . . .
Come See Us At The Awesmic City Expo!!!
Anomaly Archives at the KOOP Radio Booth: F-65 on ROW-F
SMiles Lewis’ Lecture, Sunday the 17th @1pm: Awesmic Talks ROW-A
Anomaly Archives at Awesmic City Expo
Visit us at the Anomaly Archives Booth this weekend in Booth F-65 at the …
4th Annual – ACE-2017
AWESMIC CITY EXPO
Palmer Events Center Exhibit Hall No. 2
December 16th & 17th, 2017
Entrance Fee is $5, or FREE when you bring can good donations or toy donations to our KOOP 91.7 food or toy drop located inside the ACE 2017 Palmer Event Exhibit Hall 2, Dec. 16-17, 2017.
Thanks to the Community Group Member Organizations of KOOP 91.7 Radio!
– SMiles Lewis Anomaly Archives Founder & INACS Board Member
The Super Natural A New Vision of the Unexplained by Whitley Strieber & Jeffrey J. Kripal
From C. M. Mayo’s review…
“[i]f we, as scholars of religion, cannot take this text seriously, if we cannot interpret it in some satisfying fashion, if we cannot make some sense of this man’s honest descriptions of his traumatic, transcendent experiences, then we have no business trying to understand his spiritual ancestors in the historical record. We either put up here, or we shut up there. I decided to put up.”
Now to the Kantian cut. It is to distinguish between the appearances of things and what may actually lie behind them. In making that cut, we recognize that while our physical senses provide us with essential survival-oriented information, in no way do they even begin to convey to our consciousness awareness the totality of reality. As Kripal writes, this cut “is a very reasonable and appropriate response to our actual situation in the cosmos.” Furthermore, “Once one makes such a cut, one can, in principle, take any religious experience or mythical world seriously and sympathetically without adopting any particular interpretation of it, much as one suspends disbelief to enjoy a good novel or watch a science-fiction movie.”
In other words, we don’t need to accept nor reject Strieber’s reports of UFOs and “the visitors”— yes, we can keep the lids on our coconuts while adopting the stance of radical empiricism in considering large-scale quantum phenomena!
Put yet another way: if we can simply look at such experiences as Strieber’s, sit with them, consider them “seriously and sympathetically, without adopting any particular interpretation”—we can then, to quote Kripal again, “begin to study their patterns, histories, narrative structures, sexual dimensions, and philosophical implications.” The Kantian cut thus gives us the power to then spiral up to a broader, richer view. It is an astonishing power.
. . .
Many people know Strieber as “that guy who wrote about being abducted by extraterrestrials.” In fact, Strieber reports his perceptions of his experiences, but as to what they actually are, he says, “I am a wanderer, lost in a forest of hypotheses.” Strieber also echoes Kripal in arguing that, “it is not necessary to believe in such things as flying saucers, aliens, ghosts, and other unexplained phenomena in order to study them.”
But to study such things without puckerlips, and all brain cells firing, one must make that Kantian cut—and one needs courage to persist, for that Kantian cut must be made again and again in the face of our inclination towards easy polarities, to either believe or, more commonly, reject, bristling with hostility or scornful laughter.
As Kripal puts it, one must “learn to live with paradox, to sit with the question.”
SOURCE: Literal Magazine – C. M. Mayo “A thought-provoking, intelligent reconceptualization of supernatural events.”
SMILES LEWIS LECTURE . . . SUNDAY – Dec. 17, 2017, @1pm AWESMIC TALKS – ROW A
Entrance Fee is $5, or FREE when you bring can good donations or toy donations to our KOOP 91.7 food or toy drop located inside the ACE 2017 Palmer Event Exhibit Hall 2, Dec. 16-17, 2017.
Thanks to the Community Group Member Organizations of KOOP 91.7 Radio!
UFO: Underground Freestyle Olympics!
We experience the Awesmic Starship atmosphere and participate in the Cosmic Cultures neon/black light dance and judged freestyle dance tournament with Austin, San Antonio, Dallas and Houston directed by B*Truarts & Incredicrew of Austin, Texas.
Sunday – Dec. 17
Statewide – Dallas, Houston, San Antonio to participate in the tournament hosted by ACE – B*Truarts & Incredicew and afterwards – a send off Aquarian Dance in neon/black lights atmosphere! As an added plus we will celebrate and experience multicultural regalia, arts and crafts, performance arts, presentations.
March 8th, 2016 – With so many explorers taking the final journey lately, it can be difficult just continuing. I’m so thankful for all the friends and family I have who are still here with me, with us, as we continue moving forward through spacetime.
This week’s newsletter was particularly difficult… I’ve been meaning for some time to mention the passing last year of “Texas ParaCryptozoologist” Rob Riggs. I’d known him since late 2001, early 2002, after I became aware of his bookIn the Big Thicket: On the Trail of the Wild Man. We went on an overnight expedition together into the wilds along the Sabine River with fellow Texas bigfoot seeker, Chester Moore. I’d see Rob speak of his alternative perspectives at various Texas Bigfoot conferences and host him and friends in my living room, interviewing him for a feature article in the Austin Para Times newspaper I was editing. When Rob was managing the local Natural Awakenings magazine, he sponsored the Anomaly Archives’ biggest ever event, the Texas Ghost Lights Conference featuring me as Master of Ceremonies, plus speakers including Rob, Nick Redfern, Paul Devereux, and James Bunnell. The last time I saw Rob was at his July 2014 presentation to the Anomaly Archives. Then last November, I got word that he’d passed away. I was asked to speak at his memorial and I did. I told his friends and family about my experiences with him, about how his research was received by fellow bigfoot seekers, told them about his support of the Anomaly Archives and about our strange experience on the Sabine River with Chester Moore. I also heard many wonderful stories from his numerous friends and spiritual seekers. It was a truly moving memorial for a man who dared to ask about possibilities. You can read more about him and his legacy at the links below. At that link you can also find photos of the the text of his last book, Bigfoot: Exploring the Myth & Discovering the Truth, for pages 100-103 wherein Rob relates the trip we took on the Sabine River with Chester… when the engine synchronistically cut-out after repeated mentioning of ‘El Diablo.’
. . . . .
Sadly, Rob was but one of many losses to the Cryptozoology Community this past year or so. You can find many excellent memorials to those other fine researchers as chronicled by researcher Loren Coleman at his CryptoZooNewsand Twilight Language websites in our “Leaving a Legacy” section below.
Meanwhile, there has been yet another passing of someone whom I and others found inspirational, right here in Austin, Texas: local artist and “Unofficial Mayor of South Austin” Henry Gonzalez. I met Henry and his wife Leea several years ago when my then girlfriend (now my wife) was working with them on the non-profit that they had founded. South Pop (South Austin Popular Culture Center) “collects, conserves, and exhibits vintage posters and live music ephemera from the 1960s through today to educate future generations on the rich and unique culture that makes Austin the Live Music Capital of the World.” In 2010 I became better friends with Henry and Leea as they helped me host a fun science-fiction pop-culture film-series outdoors at the South Pop facility on South Lamar. We launched the Summer Flying Saucer Cinema Series 2010, projecting such SciFi classics as Quatermass & the Pit, aka Five Million Years to Earth!, Invaders from Mars, and Starship Invasions. Henry lived an amazing and inspirational life. “Primarily known for his murals and outdoor art installations… he was part of the Armadillo Art Squad at the legendary Armadillo World Headquarter… spent time as the stage manager for the Austin Opera House and for the AFM free concert series… [and] on the road with touring bands” [including on Stevie Ray Vaughan’s final tour].
Just as we’ve been chronicling the passing of giants in our field of study, so too had Henry Gonzalez been chronicling the passing of Austin’s giants in the fields of art, music, and popular culture. One of his many achievements was “maintaining a vast altar to Austin’s departed musicians and artists. No one deserves placement on that wall more than Henry Gonzalez.”
As with each issue of our weekly newsletter, we have a wealth of News Headlines from around the globe.
Among those which particularly caught our attention and imagination this week were yet another in a long series of “strange” teaching exercises that have been enacted repeatedly at schools in England. In my 2013 lecture, The Fantastic Facts About UFOs, Altered States of Consciousness, and Mind-at-Large – UFOs & Consciousness: Part Two, I mentioned that there had been at least nine such events like this between 2008 and 2013 in which the Department for Children, Schools and Families had employed staged scenarios involving UFO crashes, alien abductions of teachers, a bloody crime scene, and even a terrifying World War 3 simulation involving sirens, videos of global catastrophe, and fireworks. Well they are at it again… check out the link in the Headlines section below.
Meanwhile, a recent article from RoadTrippers.com highlights the “hidden gems” at the Capitol Reef National Park. This reminded me of the last “Kook Out” that my friends and fellow para-seekers, writers, and researchers from the old 1990s zine scene went on back in 2003. We converged in Capitol Reef National Park and had a wonderful time hiking and sight-seeing. As always with these gatherings, we told weird stories around the campfire and enjoyed each others’ company. In the spirit of that trip I include a picture of myself below in which I am posing in front of one of the barricaded uranium mines, complete with radioactive warning sign.
We hope you enjoy this latest edition of the weekly email newsletter.
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“Quien con la esperanza vive, alegre muere.
He who lives with hope dies happy.
With much sadness in our hearts we mourn the passing of SouthPop founder and father, Henry Gonzalez. The unoffical mayor of South Austin, Henry was the keeper and sharer of the stories that make Austin great. His artwork stands as a testament to his creativity, ingenuity, vibrant spirit, and colorful personality. But all the words in the world cannot illustrate his light and enthusiasm.” – SouthPop.org
Charles Robert Riggs (Para-Cryptozoology Researcher)
“Rob authored In the Big Thicket: On the Trail of the Wild Man, published by Paraview Press in 2001. I worked with editor Patrick Huyghe and Rob, proofreading, helping out, and reviewing Rob’s book. My review talked of how much I admired his work. I wrote: ”Rob Riggs’s new book takes the reader on a wild tour through one of America’s weirdest wonderlands. Riggs has produced a great collection on such mysterious Texan wonders as the Marfa and Bragg Road ghost lights, and the Big Thicket’s Wild Man, including one delightfully named Ol’ Mossyback. A shamanistic journey.”
“Loren Coleman’s special appreciation of his fellow cryptozoologists and hominologists has made him the source of biographical insights, and his obituaries and living commentaries on the leaders of the field have been published widely. National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” for example, called on Coleman to speak in tribute of Dr. Grover Krantz who died on Valentine’s Day, 2002.”
It was hard to miss the ads for Arcturus Books in the early days, when I took my first steps into the pool of ufology. Overwhelmed with information as I was, I never thought to contact them or get a copy of their catalogue: magazines, ‘zines, newsletters and bulletin board postings (remember the long-gone days of BBS?) provided a dizzying mix of information where abduction claims, tales of underground bases and straight-out conspiracy theory shared the cramped pages like passengers on a subway train during rush hour.
It was much later that Joan Jeffers – a devoted Pennsylvanian researcher of UFO and related phenomena – told me to get a hold of Bob Girard, saying he could find any book or periodical I might remember from the early days of sauceriana, or even material from other countries. Oddly enough, I was sort of in touch with Bob already. His former partner, the late Ron Bonds, had set up Illuminet Press expressing an interest in publishing my translation of Salvador Freixedo’s “Visionaries, mystics and contactees”, a great introduction to the Spanish Jesuit’s vast body of work on the paranormal. Bob’s wife Monica provided the cover art for the project, so when I picked up the phone to call Arcturus, no introduction was really necessary.
The 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. were arguably one of the most disturbing events to happen so far this century. There are many unexplained anomalies associated with these attacks. The number and nature of the anomalies have led a significant and growing number of people to question the official explanation of these events as simply the result of a small band of terrorists.
This investigation takes a fresh look at these events using remote-viewing methods that were originally developed by the U.S. military and used for espionage purposes.
As part of the Farsight 911 Project, local Remote Viewer Todd Ronan contributed 6 RV sessions and will summarize those sessions in an effort to help decode the events of September 11th, 2001.
A few years ago someone asked me if I’d ever heard any weird stories about the Dewitt C. Greer building downtown. They proceeded to tell me they had heard tales of folks seeing blood-smeared walls and other strange haunting phenomena on certain floors within specific rooms.
Recently, as I was working on archiving paper files and periodicals held by the Anomaly Archives, I came across the October 2003 issue (Volume 29, Number 2) of TxDoT’s Transportation News magazine whose cover shouts:
GHOSTS. . . Discovered in the Greer Building !!
The Ghosts of Greer by Mike Cox / Editor
If Harvey Hubert hadn’t fatally stabbed that young Austin man on Halloween night in 1916, he might have lived to see the fine new Highway Department building go up where the Travis County Jail once stood.
But that’s not how it worked out. At 1:50 p.m. on Aug. 23, 1918, Sheriff George Matthews sprang the trap on the gallows inside the jail and Hubert paid for his crime at the end of a rope.
Hubert, 34, had the distinction of being the last of nine men legally hanged in the castle-like stone jail, built for $100,000 in 1876 at the corner of 11th and Brazos streets — present location of the Dewitt C. Greer Building.
Who knows? Maybe Hubert’s spirit has something to do with the mysterious footsteps and strange noises some TxDOT employees have reported hearing at night in the big meeting room and on the eighth floor when the building’s supposedly empty.
But for anyone who believes in ghosts, there are plenty of suspects.
This edition of Transportation News is also archived online here:
Explore the weird phenomena that surround the Big Thicket area of Texas. With bizarre sightings and experiences that have spanned cultures and centuries, the region has been of special interest to instructor and researcher Rob Riggs. Investigate the various sightings reported in Southeast Texas and learn how such phenomena constitute genuine scientific unknowns, rather than exaggerated tall-tales.
• Discuss Big Foot sightings, including the history of the wild hairy primate and current activity
• Learn about the standing Ghost Light Phenomenon
• Contextualize these phenomena within ancient mythologies
• Apply modern scientific theory to show the potential for knowledge behind the phenomena
• Compare American skepticism with the different philosophic, scientific and theological views in other countries
Rob Riggs is a veteran Texas journalist whose thirty plus years of investigating the mysteries of the Big Thicket’s weird phenomena have led to his authoring or co-authoring three published books on the subject.
Requirements: Purchase of the instructor’s two books, “In the Big Thicket” and “Bigfoot: Exploring the Myth and Discovering the Truth” directly from him during class for $25 is recommended, but not required. They may also be purchased from Nook or Kindle as e-books for about $20 total.
Anomaly Archives presents Robert Powell on UFOs & Govt
Saturday, March 29th, 2014
Free Event – Donations Welcomed!
Robert Powell has been the Director of Research at MUFON since 2007 and is also the head of MUFON’s Science Review Board. He is an active Field Investigator in the state of Texas having completed over 120 investigations and is a MUFON Star Team member. He is one of two authors of the detailed radar/witness report on the Stephenville Lights. Robert is also a member of the Society for Scientific Exploration, the National Space Society, and the Académie d’Ufologie. Robert is active with FOIA requests to various government organizations to obtain information on historical cases and is a co-author of a book published in July 2012: UFOs and Government: A Historical Inquiry. Robert currently resides in Austin, Texas.
Robert has a BS in Chemistry and is a former collegiate debater. He has 28 years in engineering management in the semiconductor industry from 1978 to 2006. While working at Advanced Micro Devices he has taken numerous internal courses related to device physics, design of experiments, and statistical analysis. He helped Advanced Micro Devices develop its first flash memory technology that is used in today’s flash cards for cameras, PCs, video cameras, and other products. His experience includes managing a state-of-the-art chemistry laboratory and managing a Research and Development group that worked on nanotechnology using atomic force microscopes, near-field optical microscopy, and other techniques. Robert is also a co-holder of four patents related to nanotechnology.
Talk Synopsis: UFOs & Government: The Historical and Changing Role of Government over Time
Governments have been concerned about UFO sighting reports since WWII, but historians have never made a concerted attempt to understand their often contradictory responses to the phenomenon. How could something of such potential technological and national security consequence have left no visible trace in the history books? Whether it’s a conspiracy or not, the subject has been marginalized to such an extent that it’s as if the military never acted with alarm on the heels of a UFO sighting, as if the intelligence community never took up the issue behind closed doors, as if government research and development efforts never attempted to duplicate the phenomenon. But they have. Robert Powell will discuss how governments, especially the U.S. government, have dealt with the UFO phenomenon and will provide a hypothesis as to why the phenomenon took its roots during WWII.
