What do you think about this?
In 1520, Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition was anchored in a harbor on the southern coast of South America, on what we now call Patagonia, when a man came out of the woods who reportedly stood taller than the tallest sailor in the crew by more than a foot. Magellan’s chronicler Antonio Pigafetta, an Italian scholar who kept a careful and otherwise reliable journal of the voyage, wrote that some of these people were nearly nine feet tall.
The crew called them Patagones, big feet, because of the size of their footprints. The name stuck. Patagonia is named for them.
That should have been the end of it. One eccentric report, easy to dismiss.
Except other expeditions kept seeing them. Sir Francis Drake’s crew in 1578 described people of extraordinary height in the same region. Anthony Knyvet in 1592 measured corpses he claimed were twelve feet long. The Spanish ship Saint Peter in 1614 reported the same. Commodore John Byron’s crew on the HMS Dolphin in 1764 described, in sworn testimony to the Royal Society in London, encountering a tribe whose smallest members were seven feet tall.
We have these accounts in English, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese, from Catholic clergymen, naval officers, scientists, and merchants, spanning two hundred and fifty years, all describing the same general region of southern Argentina and Chile.
By the time European settlement reached Patagonia in the nineteenth century, the people there were of ordinary height.
The truth may be far stranger than we have been told.
What do you think about this? Over five months from late 1989, more than 13,000 people in Belgium reported a silent black triangle with three corner lights. In March 1990 two F sixteen jets locked radar on it, and it made moves no pilot could survive. Secret aircraft, or a genuine visitor?
What do you think about this? The Abenaki spoke of something in Lake Champlain long before Europeans arrived, and Port Henry still keeps a sign counting sightings. In 1977 Sandra Mansi photographed a long neck and a dark hump, and no hoax was ever found in it. Log, or a real animal?
What do you think about this? In 1579 Francis Drake beached the Golden Hind somewhere on the northern California coast and claimed the land for England. Nobody can say which beach. A brass plate found in 1936 was celebrated for decades, then proved a hoax. Point Reyes, or somewhere else?
What do you think about this? Among the Dead Sea Scrolls, one is engraved on copper instead of parchment, and it is a treasure map. It lists 64 hiding places holding tons of gold and silver. Not one has ever been found. Real temple gold, or an ancient legend set in metal?
What do you think about this? On August 15, 1977, an Ohio telescope caught a 72 second burst from Sagittarius, 30 times stronger than background, right on the hydrogen frequency. The astronomer circled it and wrote Wow. It never came back. Fluke, or one word of a conversation?
What do you think about this? The Shroud of Turin carries a full length image of a man that behaves like a photographic negative, which nobody noticed until it was first photographed in 1898. Carbon dating said medieval. Nobody can explain how the image formed. Artwork, or something else?
Field reports, theories, and intel from the X-Files straight to your inbox. No filler, no algorithms, just the work.
Phone is optional. If you add it, we may text you tour drops, book launches, and breaking news from the X-Files up to 4 messages a month. Reply STOP anytime. Msg & data rates may apply.