http://columbuscameragroup.com/2011/05/05/ The strange events of 1967 continue to get stranger, as chronicled in the “Special Cases” file. Jaye Paro meets “Miss Xeno” (as John had dubbed her) stealing rags from the basement of Paro’s apartment building. Miss Xeno reveals that her name is “Agar,” and appears frightened at being caught. John is perplexed by all this, and continues to try to figure out what’s really going on.
The next installment in John’s “Special Cases” file concerns the metal disk Jaye Paro claimed Mr. Apol had given her. She sent it to John, who was duly puzzled, and who was beginning to suspect the whole business was a hoax. Just in case, however, he made a notarized statement about some of her predictions.
We pick up the story later the same day. Jaye Paro has another encounter with “Miss Xeno,” as John dubbed her.
Sulfa tablets are antimicrobial, and contain synthetic sulfonamides. They’re not straight sulfur. John kept some from one of his contactees, which I posted a picture of here.
We have here the next excerpt from John’s “Special Cases” file, his investigation of contactees in Long Island in 1967. Jaye Paro has already had an unsettling encounter with a strange woman in a library and a clothing store, and now meets her again. She also has her first encounter with Mr. Apol. All of this was eventually incorporated into Chapter 15 of The Mothman Prophecies. This is a fuller account, including Apol’s odd questions to Jaye.
John states here that he thinks she’s telling the truth, but expresses reservations elsewhere in his files.
We continue through John’s “Special Cases” file, which chronicles, day by day, his investigations in 1967. Jaye Paro had started sending him her experiences, which only became stranger and more elaborate as time went on. It should be remembered that John was suspicious of her stories, but kept up the correspondence to find out more. These next few entries concern Jaye’s encounters with the mysterious “Librarian.”
Please note the first appearance of the enigmatic Mr. Apol, here spelled “Apal.”
Forging doggedly through John’s “Special Cases” files, we come across his first interactions with Jaye Paro (the professional name of Joanne Perranno). Readers may recognize her from her appearance in The Mothman Prophecies. I have no idea what she was up to, but a lot of high weirdness followed.
1967 was an especially busy year for John, and he kept a running record of his activities. He called it his “Special Cases File,” and it included correspondence, clippings, and diary entries, collected into a series of binders. I’ve posted material from the first one, and I’ll now head into the second. I’m sorry to disappoint Mothman fans, but there’s more here about Long Island than Point Pleasant.
John’s daily life became extremely strange at this time, as he did his best to keep up with a barrage of weirdness, mixed in with hoaxes and dead ends: all in the hope of finding out what was happening, and getting some salable copy from it. A lot of it seems crazy now, but he was following leads with his usual thoroughness, and, apparently, enjoying the excitement.
Below is John’s note at the beginning of the file, followed by a letter to Charles Bowen, editor of the British Flying Saucer Review. The letter sums up John’s research at that time, and goes into some interesting details, including his ambiguous opinion of Woodrow Derenberger.
Mary continued to keep John informed on the sightings in Point Pleasant. This letter reports on a Mothman encounter and two UFO sightings. I apologize for cutting off the top of the letter; John stapled several of these sheets together, and I wanted to keep them intact.
I thought I’d posted all of Mary Hyre’s letters, but I just found a couple that John put in his “Special Cases” files. (For those unfamiliar with her, she was a reporter in Point Pleasant who kept John up to date on Mothman and UFO reports; The Mothman Prophecies is dedicated to her).
This letter reports on three UFO sightings, including one of hers, and an odd dream. As always, I apologize for the quality of her typewriter.
It’s been seven years since John died, on July 3, 2009. I’m sure he’d be glad to know he was still remembered and read, but I can hear a faint voice from the afterlife, adding, “Yeah, but where’s the money?”
John is shown here with Gray Barker and Jim Moseley, from the Fall 1967 issue of Saucer News.