Years ago, a radio broadcaster named Frank Edwards wrote a huge bestseller called Stranger Than Science. It was a brilliant title, covering all manner of the bizarre, from “ghosts” or poltergeists to arcane disappearances and places such as the Bermuda Triangle.

Strange stuff in the strange, twentieth century.

The twenty-first century is proving stranger still — “strangest of all,” if we can play on the title. Much is questionable, as usual. Much is imagined or fabricated — so easy to do, with the tools of the internet (never mind A.I.). Much is the product of occultism or hypnosis and, as such, is highly suspect.

You have subjects who, under hypnosis, claim abduction by aliens.

Or previous lifetimes (see: reincarnation).

You have people who when hypnotized recall rituals and abuse that may never have occurred. Occult stuff.

Hypnosis is not to be meddled with, for it plays with territories of the mind that lay in that twilight zone of consciousness-unconsciousness and that, more importantly, traverse into spiritual realms.

Nothing Frank Edwards or anyone else (he was preceded by a real guru of the bizarre named Charles Fort) is quite as strange as some of the YouTube videos now out there. Edwards and Fort both would be amazed — and unable to keep up with it. (We tried in a book fashioned after Edwards’, Lying Wonders, Strangest Things.)

One recent YouTube video that comes to mind is on a “show” called “Redacted,” hosted by Clayton Morris, a professional journalist and former anchor with Fox News, who recently reported on what he said were “fear-stricken residents of a rural area in Alto Nanay, situated northeast of Lima, Peru,” who “assert that they are currently facing an onslaught from armored extraterrestrial entities standing at a towering seven feet. These beings uncannily resemble the Green Goblin character from Spider-Man, and local reports detail their distinctive features, including sizable heads and yellow-hued eyes.”

Is that not strange enough — bizarre enough — for you? We’ll be doing a retreat on February 10 that in part will cover the uncanniness.

“Since July 11th, these otherworldly creatures have allegedly been conducting nightly assaults on the village,” the video synopsis went on. “One particularly distressing occurrence narrates the experience of a 15-year-old girl who was supposedly seized from behind and subjected to a neck injury when she resisted.

“As a result of these continuous threats, community inhabitants find themselves gripped by trepidation, robbed of peaceful sleep.”

The interview was with an adventurer and investigative filmmaker named Timothy Alberino, who took two trips down there to the Amazon, interviewing villagers not only in Alto Nanay, but apparently elsewhere in the region, all claiming uncannily similar accounts.

Hard to believe?

How about impossible.

Reported the London Mail: “Locals described the ‘extraterrestrials’ as having large heads and yellowish eyes, and said the mysterious figures are immune to their hunting weapons. They claim they have attacked them every night for nearly a month since July 11.”

They resembled, these entities, says Alberino, beings called “face peelers.”

That I had never heard before. (Is this from comic strips?)

As I said, it stretches the bounds of “strange.” Spirits like to play games.

And it hardly stands alone.

In the U.S., video clips purporting to show a similarly towering, silhouette-like humanoid in Miami are making the rounds. It looked like mere shadows. (Headline: “Teens running, police converging and a grey splotch that appears to be moving: Videos from an outdoor mall in Miami stoked wild claims this week on social media that aliens had landed on Earth. But the truth is far more terrestrial. The teens were setting off fireworks, which led to a panic as some assumed there was a shooting, said Miami Police Department public information officer Michael Vega. Four teens were arrested.”)

Apparently, these incidents too have caused “near-panic” (if one believes those YouTube videos).

The entities in Peru supposedly hovered with jetpack-like technology and rode discs on their feet — surfed the air electromagnetically, if you will. Some were dressed in cloaks and hoods (if that brings anything to mind).

Oh, yes: caution. We are in a time of deception.

We are in a time of fog.

We’ll be presenting an online retreat in February on just this topic.

As we always remind you, in addition to simple cases of mass hysteria and hoax (the latter not seeming to be the case in Peru; mass hysteria?), there is the devil and his minions, creating deceptions and distracting us as darkness continues to fall (and confuse).

Other subjects on this channel have claimed things such as having been kidnapped and brought to bases on the moon, where — one guest told Morris — she was sexually abused.

You are to be excused if you think this is implausible.

At the same time, there are some cases that are mysterious. Currently, former military types and others have been testifying before a U.S. House subcommittee investigating government evidence of aliens.

As National Public Radio reported, “Three military veterans testified in Congress’ highly anticipated hearing on UFOs Wednesday, including a former Air Force intelligence officer who claimed the U.S. government has operated a secret ‘multi-decade’ reverse engineering program of recovered vessels. He also said the U.S. has recovered non-human ‘biologics’ from alleged crash sites.”

That term “biologic” has drawn much attention.

And so it goes.

Bring the evidence, finally. Bring something tangible, visible.

Oh, YouTube: it has made everyone media celebrities — fifteen minutes of fame — with those large spongy boom microphones so prevalent these days they’re sold at Staples.

Our strange time!

Anyway, hear for yourself, if you wish, as strange times grow all the stranger.

[resources: Lying Wonders, Strangest Things]