Super 8 is currently playing in theaters. Let’s begin by saying that I saw the movie last night. I liked it. The movie is set in the year 1979. Take it from someone who was 8-years-old, going on 9, in the Summer of ’79. The clothes, the cars, and the music were spot on.

Kudos to director J.J. Abrams for capturing the look of 1979.

The movie itself is engrossing, at first. The audience learns in the beginning of the movie that an industrial accident has claimed the life of a woman. The woman’s son and husband are left to begin the grieving process. The film moves to four months after her death.

The son, Joe, deals with the loss of his mom while helping his three friends make an amateur zombie movie. The movie’s script calls for a girl. So, the four boys ask a girl named Alice to participate in film. Joe apparently has a crush on Alice.

On the first night of the filming with Alice, the pre-teens witness a spectacular train accident, which begins another storyline in the film. The military moves in to town, pet dogs clear out of town, and people begin to disappear from town without a trace. Strange things are afoot in town, but the filming of the film within the film continues. So does the grieving process of a widower, as well as a son left without a mother. (Warning: major plot twist revealed in the next paragraph. Skip it and move on to the next if you don’t want to know.)

The widower, who is also the local deputy sheriff, quickly moves on to the blame and anger stages of grief. We learn that his deceased wife was only working that particular shift four months prior to cover for a co-worker. It’s revealed that the co-worker couldn’t work his shift that day, because he was drunk. We learn that alcohol helps him to deal with his wife leaving him and his daughter, some time before.  The daughter is Joe’s love-interest, Alice. Alice and Joe are forbidden to see each other by their fathers. So begins a sort-of Romeo and Juliet story in the summer of ’79.

The clothes, the cars and the music, like I said, are spot-on for 1979. What was happening in the world around the fictional town was not. One reference to popular culture, early in the film, was incorrect: the Rubik’s cube. When this reference was made early in the movie, I fell out of my own personal time machine and hit the ground hard. I spent the rest of the time in the theater trying to recall that particular summer, since my memory seemed to be failing me.

I couldn’t put my finger on it until I got home. The Rubik’s cube reference would have fit the following year, 1980. So that reference threw me. Something else mesmerized the world in 1979, which I would have recalled if I wasn’t puzzled over the Rubik’s cube:

Skylab was falling that summer.

During the summer of 1979, people all over the world pondered the falling-back-to-earth of Skylab. NASA had no idea where on earth the 85-ton space station would land. Of course, it would largely break up when it entered the earth’s atmosphere, but pieces of it could still kill you.

I was terrified of Skylab. I didn’t want to die. Neither did anyone else. It was a big, big deal.

Skylab caused an international media frenzy. Who can forget  those 12 million radio listeners who participated in a mass meditation to halt a potential disaster? Those listeners employed  “mental energy”, on a day in May, to try to push Skylab into a higher orbit to prevent its re-entry. It didn’t work. It fell back to earth in July 1979.

It fell into the ocean and no one died. Still, it was a big, big deal at the time. At the time, which would perfectly correspond with the time frame captured in Super 8. Abrams missed a great opportunity to incorporate Skylab into the plot. It would have been a better reference to popular culture than the Rubik’s cube.

Okay, back to Super 8. The rest of the movie is great. It’s revealed that an alien from outer space is behind the strange goings on in town. The alien also happens to have some issues dealing with his own personal pain and grief. So, it basically all ties together and works out in the end.

If you seek nostalgia,  think back to what you were doing when Skylab was falling. This, of course, doesn’t apply to younger viewers who won’t know the difference.

The film is directed by J.J. Abrams and produced by Steven Spielberg. It stars Joel Courtney, Elle Fanning and Kyle Chandler. The film has a run-time of 112 minutes and is rated PG-13.

Paranormal Old Pueblo now has its own URL off the Tucson Citizen website.

To follow more posts about UFOs/ UFO News / Extraterrestrials, Cryptozoology, Fringe Science, Psychic Phenomena, Ghosts and Hauntings and other general paranormal topics, visit http://www.paranormaloldpueblo.com.

A UFO investigator in Colorado has been terminated from his volunteer deputy post following a horse mutilation investigation.

Back in November 2010, Fox31 News in Denver posted an article about a strange horse mutilation incident at the Schneider family ranch in El Paso County, Colorado. The family found two of their horses dead and badly mutilated on their ranch last August. After the discovery, the family filed a report with the El Paso County Sheriff’s Department and called in paranormal investigator, Chuck Zukowski, to search for answers.

The horses were discovered with their throats slit and chests cut open. The genitals, tongues, and eyes of the horses were removed. The family stated that there were no footprints around the horses and no blood evident. Since El Chupacabra, humans, predators and satanic cults would leave footprints, Zukowski blamed UFOs, according to the report by Fox31 news.

Zukowski’s findings, as reported by bloggers and the media, were contradictory to the official findings of the El Paso County Sheriff’s Department, for whom Zukowski served in a volunteer capacity for for 8 years.

Following the posting of the original post in the Tucson Citizen in November, Zukowski blamed ‘bad journalism’ on the parts of Fox31 and the Tucson Citizen for misrepresenting his statements. He stated that the family and area ranchers believed that the horse mutilations were alien or military-related, but that his written findings always conclude as “unknown death”. Zukowksi referred to his publicly posted investigation findings for clarification, which were considered prior to the November posting. However, the statements attributed to Zukowski, as reported by Fox31, were included in the Tucson Citizen post, clearly attributing Zukiowski’s statements to the interview with Fox31.

The official findings from the El Paso County Sheriff’s Department pointed to predators as causing the demise of the horses. Zukowski’s publicly available online report and statements made to the news media, does not come to the identical conclusion, which contributed to his termination

Zukowski’s termination letter from the department states among other things:

“The termination is a result of you conducting paranormal and unidentified flying object investigations into animal mutilations, and then publicly contradicting and being critical of official Sheriff’s Office investigations in a public forum. Although you have claimed not to have represented yourself as a Sheriff’s Office Reserve Deputy, the media reports allude to you as “volunteer El Paso County Sheriff’s Department deputy.” This adversarial position, without having full knowledge of the information gathered by detectives, is unacceptable.”

Zukowski told NewsFirst5.com in an interview: “I know in the letter it says that I contradicted their statement, but I didn’t contradict them per se. Where I mentioned El Paso County Sheriff’s Department was wrong, I’ve never, ever done that.”

A fresh piece of information included in the Tucson Citizen‘s post from November, was the fact that Zukowski served as a volunteer deputy for the El Paso County Sheriff’s Department. This information was publicly available in his bio page, on his UFO investigation website, to outline his relevant experience. Although the information is now updated to read: “a former Reserve Deputy Sheriff with El Paso County Sheriff’s Department, Colorado”.

Ten days after the post on the Tucson Citizen, an article posted at the website thehorse.com, also identified Zukowski as a reserve deputy for the department. Zukowski told News5 that he never represented himself to the author as a reserve deputy.

Whether the information of Zukowski’s volunteer post with the department was found on the Tucson Citizen or Zukowski’s public website, was not stated in thehorse.com article.

To read Zukowki’s public response to his termination from the El Paso County Sheriff’s Department on his website (in his own words), click here.

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Read more paranormal news by Cherlyn Gardner Strong on her website: http://www.paranormaloldpueblo.com.