Giant Catfish in Fresno County's Millerton Lake?

I remember the first time I went fishing with my stepfather(I was around nine or so) and he told me this story of a friend of his who had supposedly seen a giant catfish in Millerton Lake.

The story goes that the man was fishing around the Friant Dam, when, while he was moving around, accidentally knocked off the boat motor. He was able to make it to shore using the trolling motor, but decided that he wanted to try to retrieve the motor as it was new and he had paid a lot for it.

The man rented some dive equipment and returned the next weekend. To lift his motor back to the surface, he took with him several large balloons that he would fill with a small auxiliary tank that would lift the motor back to the surface. After descending to the bottom, he began searching for his motor. After several minutes he came across something that he wouldn't have believed if he hadn't seen it for himself. Staring at him was an extremely large catfish. According to him the mouth was so big it could have easily have swallowed him. He estimated the length to be between 8-10' long. This was a quick estimate has he didn't stick around long enough to get a thorough look at it. Needless to say he got the hell out of there and never did retrieve his motor.

Now I don't know if this story is just another variant of the big fish that got away or something else, but I thought it was worth mentioning. I know back east, especially in the south large catfish have been known to be caught. Some even match the descriptions that I mentioned above. And catfish do have a fast growth rate, and they continue to grow all there life.

I wouldn't be surprised if there were several large catfish at the bottom of Millerton Lake near the dam hiding where no one will bother them. Their only company a forgotten motor boat engine that has long since rusted away.

Strange craft seen flying over Fremont, CA

I came across a video earlier purported to be taken in Fremont, Ca on December 5, 2008. The camera has night vision capabilities which greatly enhanced it's field of view. During the first part of the video, you can see a flashing object moving across the camera from right to left. Unfortuantely this is nothing more than an airplane.

But at around 0:20 is when it gets interesting. The camera zooms in onto a boomerang shaped craft that has five lights on it. It's traveling at a much faster speed than the previous metnioned airplane (which is also in the camera's field of view at the same time). It's height can't be that high, as you can see it passing under a few contrails.



My guess is this is a single craft, and not multiple ones. Given the manuevers it performs, it would be near impossible for individual craft to maintain such a formation with little or no variation. Whatever was filmed here is yet more evidence of triangular shaped aircraft flying in the sky. This video has inspired me to aim my night vision to the sky and see if I can capture anything myself. If I do, I'll post it here.

Ghost caught on surveillance tape in Chile.

A small, phantom like creature was recently caught on CCTV (closed circuit television) in a shopping mall in Chile. At the five second mark you can see a small, semi-transparent black entity enter the screen from the bottom center. It wanders towards the right before going up towards the top left before disappearing off screen.



Who knows what this is. I've seen other surveillance tapes where a strange object moves across the camera's view, but upon closer inspection it was just something on the lens of the camera. Whatever this is, it seems to be moving across the floor. Whatever it is, it's pretty damn weird.

Thanks to Heather over at the Fresno Beehive for sending me this video.

UFO seen in the movie Jaws?

I found this video on YouTube while searching for some UFO footage. It's a scene from Steven Spielberg's movie Jaws, with the boat out on the ocean. Around the thirty second mark, you can see a bright object enter the top left portion of the screen and streak towards the bottom right, but disappears behind the cloud cover in the background.



The skeptic in me has me thinking meteorite or space debris entering the Earth's atmosphere. But for something that bright, it would have to have been a rather large object. There is always the possibility of it being some sort of alien spacecraft (perhaps it was part of the cast from Close Encounters which was released two years after Jaws) but given the trajectory I highly doubt it. Still I find it interesting that this was left in the shot. Perhaps Spielberg didn't see it at the time and decided to leave it in instead of having to reshoot.

Underground tunnels found in Fresno's Chinatown

Back in 2007 a team of archaeologists were exploring one of the boarded-up buildings in Fresno's Chinatown, an enclave long abandoned by the people who gave the area its name more than a century ago.

They were searching for any antique left by the former owners of what had been a restaurant and home. The team descended into the basement and did find a few artifacts. Then came something that was not expected. The group spotted a dark crawl space seemingly hidden by boards on the basement's eastern wall. Was this an entrance to the supposed tunnel system that had been rumored about for years?

Tunnels in Chinatown were rumored to have been so vast that patrons could travel from one end of the neighborhood to the other and never see daylight. One tunnel was rumored to have extended under the dividing railway tracks so that men from the White side of town could reach Chinatown speakeasies undetected.

Since the discovery of the tunnel entrance, the City of Fresno has been using ground penetrating radar to map out the extent of the underground network. Some local groups have started to lead tours, guiding visitors to the basement of a barbershop where mysterious doorways are sealed with concrete.

A more extensive article from the LA Times can be found here.

Is Fresno State’s campus haunted?

Cadavers, a bloody chainsaw and a dismembered body are things that you expect from a horror movie, but little do many students know that they are actually part of Fresno State history.

Some of the upstairs practice rooms in the Music building are rumored to be haunted.

Strong winds and unexpected lightning lit the night sky as DJ Clovis, a senior music performance major, said that he heard strange noises in the music building.

“Some people say that they hear voices or whistling in the practice rooms,” Clovis said.

There are other buildings on campus that hold some surprising tools used for studying.

Some classes held in Mclane Hall require students to work with cadavers. Amanda Lopez, a junior physical therapy major, is taking one of these classes. She said the rooms are always cold and have a morgue-like feel.

Being there alone is not something that she likes to do.

“It’s the whole setting,” Lopez said. “It’s cold and you know the bodies are there and they’re dead. You see all of these movies that bring up things in your head that freaks you out. You know that they are not true, but still.”

Another building that has a creepy story is the Mckee Fisk building.

Greg Lewis, a mass communication and journalism professor, said that late one night he was showing a few people the plaque in memory of Roger Tatarian, just outside of Mckee Fisk.

He stood on the plaque and said, “Hello, Roger.” Just then, the automatic doors behind him opened and closed by themselves.

According to an article written by Donald E. Coleman of the Fresno Bee in October of 1997, there is one professor from Fresno State history who has been referred to as “Jekyll and Hyde.”

Almost 20 years ago, Max Bernard Franc, a former political science professor from Fresno State, was arrested in August of 1988 for the murder of Tracy Leroy Nute.

Police discovered Franc after he rented and returned a chainsaw that was stained with blood, still containing bits of flesh.

He was charged for shooting Nute, and then cutting up the body to get it out of his apartment in west Hollywood. Parts of the body were found in Madera County and Los Angeles County.

If you happen to be on campus and feel a cold chill or your hair stand up, remember that it may be more than just your imagination.

The original story can be found here.

Black helicopters seen in Fresno after UFO sighting in May 1997

On Tuesday, May 20, 1997, viewers in Fresno, California were startled when Channel 30, the city's ABC-TV affiliate, aired a 15-minute segment on UFOs.

Highlighting the segment was a brief tape, alleged to have been shot in Fresno, showing "a round glowing object."

Prior to the Channel 30 presentation, city residents had been puzzled by reports of black helicopters on patrol over McKinley, Belmont and Olive Avenues, just north of Chandler Airport.

Eyewitness Jeff Heuer, who lives near McKinley Avenue, said he saw one black helicopter flying over the neighborhood on May 10 at about 9 p.m. The black chopper was flying low, about 100 feet (30 meters) above the ground, at an estimated speed of 160 mph.

One week later, on Saturday, May 17, 1997, at 10 p.m., Heuer spotted two more black helicopters. "There were two of them in close formation," he reported, "No sound, no exhaust, and no flashing lights--just a steady white light. They flew very close to the ground, from the southeast to the northwest. (Kings Canyon Road to Herndon Avenue-J.T.) Definitely looked like helicopters--but very Stealth-like."

Questioned about the helicopters' appearance, Heuer said they had a "wide fuselage, no visible (tail) rotor, could not see underbelly--no visible landing gear. No noise of any type. No exhaust. Both were in tight formation, with one just in front of the other. The one in the rear seemed to be on the right-hand side of the one in the lead."

Orginal story can be found here.

Landowner sells haunted building to get rid of ghost.

In an attempt to decrease the eerie noises emanating from the dilapidated dredge, the private landowner sold part of the California land that the Dredge rested on. The purchaser agreed to move his part of the dredge to Australia immediately. The unsuspecting purchaser was not aware of the ghost sightings and loud banging noises that accompanied the Tuolumne Dredge's history.




The proposed haunted dredge.



The California man later found the ghostly apparitions refused to part ways with his portion of the dredge. Alarmingly, the sounds grew louder, especially the knocking coming from the pipes. The other part of the dredge that was dismantled, transported, and resurrected took longer than expected. When the Australian man finally completed the project, he immediately called the California man with reports of the dredge's spooky haunt and loud banging pipes. The Californian has abandoned the dredge due to fear of what he saw (but won't talk about!) and let the weeds grow around it. Instead of the weeds, the woods have taken it over. The other part of the dredge in Australia has been worked to restore its original condition. Both owners have been unable to solve where the mysterious sights and sounds are originating.

The original story can be found here.