On July 26, 1984, Edward Theodore “Ed” Gein died of respiratory and heart failure related to cancer at the age of 77.

This convicted killer wasn’t only satisfied with taking lives. He also exhumed bodies from cemeteries to take bones and skin from corpses. At least 40 of these graveyard trips occurred between 1947 and 1952.

Since the man was only linked to the killings of less than three people, he did not meet the criteria to be labeled a serial killer. Yet, his crimes provided the basis for famous horror film characters: Jame Gumb (Silence of the Lambs), Leatherface (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) and Norman Bates (Psycho).

In 1957, Gein confessed to two killings after police found body parts in his house. Gein, like Jame Gumb, was in the midst of creating a “woman suit” after his mother died, so he could pretend to be a female.

Some of the recovered body parts belonged to Gein’s victims Mary Hogan and Bernice Worden. Hogan was a tavern owner, who Gein admitted to killing in 1954. Warden owned a hardware store and was admittedly killed by Gein in 1957.

Unfit to stand trial, he was initially confined in a mental health facility. In 1968, he was finally tried for the murder of Bernice Worden.

The itemized inventory of parts collected from the Gein home included (from Wikipedia):

• Four noses
• Whole human bones and fragments
• Nine masks of human skin
• Bowls made from human skulls
• Ten female heads with the tops sawed off
• Human skin covering several chair seats
• Mary Hogan’s head in a paper bag
• Bernice Worden’s head in a burlap sack
• Nine vulvas in a shoe box
• Skulls on his bedposts
• Organs in the refrigerator
• A pair of lips on a draw string for a windowshade

The judge stated that “Due to prohibitive costs, Gein was tried for only one murder — that of Mrs. Worden.”

Gein died in Madison, Wisconsin at Mendota Mental Health Institute.

The team of UFO experts in China have released their findings related to the event that shut down Xiaoshan Airport on July 7th.

No evidence shows that the UFO is associated with an extraterrestrial flying saucer, according to the Beijing UFO Research Organization (BURO) on July 25.

BURO believes that the UFO incident stemmed from the activities of private or military aircraft.

According to the information released from the report, the radar did not detect the UFO. The crews of two flights did. BURO noted that the airport radar has “blind spots.”

Aviation authorities have yet to publish any UFO photo or video information. It is stated that any videos or photos released by the media have no connection with the Xiaoshan incident.

The incident at Hangzhou’s Xiaoshan Airport earlier this month caused 20 flights to be diverted, with approximately 2,000 passengers affected. The airport was shut down for an hour.

While our eyes are turned to the sky this summer with mass UFO sightings, we should also be on the lookout for another type of UFO in the sky: reportedly giant birds.

An event that occurred 33 years ago triggered a period of mass sightings of the mythical Thunderbird.

On July 25, 1977, three little boys were playing in a Lawndale, Illinois back yard when two giant birds swooped down on them. Two of the boys ran away, but the birds shifted their focus toward the third boy: ten-year-old Marlon Lowe.

One of the birds clamped onto the boy’s shoulders and reportedly attempted to fly off with him. The boy was reportedly lifted two feet off the ground by the bird before he fought back against it, which caused the bird to lose its grip on him. Some accounts report that the boy was lifted up to ten feet off the ground.

The good news is that the boy escaped the clutches of the bird.

“Thunderbird is a term used in cryptozoology to describe large, bird-like creatures, generally identified with the Thunderbird of Native American tradition. Similar cryptids reported in the Old World are often called Rocs. Thunderbirds are regarded by a small number of researchers as having lizard features like the extinct pterosaurs such as Pteranodon. Although reports of Thunderbird sightings go back centuries, due to the lack of scientific evidence (such as a fossil record), the creature is generally regarded as a myth.”- Source: Wikipedia

Thunderbirds haven’t escaped the clutches of the media, especially in the Grand Canyon State. The earliest known published account of a giant bird can be found in a Tombstone, Arizona newspaper.

In April of 1890, two cowboys were said to have killed one. The men said it had the face of an alligator, smooth skin and featherless bat-like wings. The description matched that of a prehistoric pterodactyl.

A photograph of the dead Thunderbird was said to have been published in the Tombstone Epitaph.

However, searches through the paper’s archive for a photo have proved to be as illusive as the Thunderbird itself. Archives do not reveal a photograph, but simply an article about a dead bird with a 16-foot wingspan.