Somewhere in the Skies - The Eerie Erie Entity w/ Zelia Edgar

Episode Date: January 24, 2026

Zelia Edgar explores the chilling 1966 “Eerie, Erie Entity” encounter at Presque Isle State Park on the shores of Lake Erie, where a stranded group of picnickers reported a luminous UFO, intense buzzing sounds, and a terrifying, faceless humanoid emerging from the woods. Blending witness testimony, police involvement, and later skepticism from official investigators, this episode examines the strange overlap of UFO phenomena and cryptid encounters, leaving listeners to decide for themselves what truly haunted that beach on a summer night. Subscribe to Just Another Tin Foil Hat on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@JustAnotherTinFoilHat Please take a moment to rate and review us on Spotify and Apple. Book Ryan on CAMEO at: https://bit.ly/3kwz3DO Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/somewhereskies ByMeACoffee: http://www.buymeacoffee.com/UFxzyzHOaQ PayPal: [e-mail] Substack: https://ryansprague.substack.com/ All Socials and Books: https://linktr.ee/somewhereskiespod Email: [e-mail] SpectreVision Radio: https://www.spectrevision.com/podcasts Opening Theme Song by Septembryo Copyright © 2026 Ryan Sprague. All rights reserved. #ParanormalPodcast #HighStrangeness #UFOEncounters #CryptidStories #Unexplained #StrangeEncounters #UAP #TrueMystery #WeirdHistory #AnomalousPhenomena Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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The officers and young man moved out. of sight looking for the strange light that the group had seen it had appeared suddenly and just as suddenly vanished as betty jean waited with her friend and her friend's two young children in the car movement caught her eye as she would later describe it a formless being came out of the dark welcome to just another tinfoil hat with your host zilia edgar join zilia as she walks us through some of the most bizarre UFO cases and incidents of high strangeness today it was we will be discussing the fascinating case of the eerie, eerie entity. And if you look at the title, you'll see what I did there.

It's eerie with two E's as in spooky. And then it's Eerie with one E. Well, actually, technically, it's Erie with three Ease as spooky. And then it's Erie with two E's, E.R.I.E as the Great Lake, Lake Erie entity. Yeah, so the Eerie, Eerie entity. On the evening of July 31st, 1966, several people were picnicking in Pennsylvania's Presque Isle State Park. It's actually a peninsula that kind of arcs around Erie Harbor on Lake Erie. Now, this group included 16-year-old Betty Jean Clem and her boyfriend, 18-year-old Douglas J. Tibbitts,

26-year-old Gerald LaBelle, and Anita Halfley, 22, and her two young daughters, one age two years, the other six months old. So literally like a toddler and a baby. So the group had enjoyed their picnic. on the sandy beach. I'm suddenly realizing there are a ton of cases I've done recently where people are picnicking. You know, Keel maintained that gravel pits, cemeteries, dumps were the best place to see anomalous phenomena. If we can combine this with the picnicking thing, maybe take your picnic to a dump, perhaps. Hey, maybe you'll up your chances of seeing Bigfoot or something.

Who knows? But anyway, they enjoyed their picnic on the sandy beach and then realized that as they went to leave, unfortunately their car was stuck sunken in the sand and surrounded by trees and bushes so gerald went to go get help and the rest of the group kind of packed up all their belongings around 930 or 10 o'clock park patrol officers ralph clark and robert lobe came upon the remainder of the group and asked if they needed assistance um they told them no they're fine they're waiting on their friend gerald to get back with help and the officers were like okay well if that doesn't pan out we'll be back in about 40 minutes. So sounds good the small group opted to wait in the car, Anita and her two young

children in the back, and then the young couple up front. By this time, the night had grown chilly and clear. So up in the front, Betty, Jean, and Douglas were stargazing when they noticed an especially bright star, which appeared to be getting brighter. It was then that they realized, probably to a mixture of some confusion, surprise, maybe a little bit of, I don't know, nervousness, that it appeared to actually be getting closer, and it also appeared to have a distinct form behind it. Betty Jean described it as looking like a mushroom. She said it was an oval-like structure with lights on it, kind of on a narrow base. While Douglas described it as looking hexagonal, he said almost looked like it was hollow on the inside. Whatever it was, they claimed that it came right down on the beach about 150 yards in front

of them. Now, as it landed, they said that it glowed brilliant red and began emitting strong beams of light, so bright that Douglas claimed he couldn't see the object after it landed, just these nearly blinding rays of white light. Now they stated that in addition to emitting this bright white light, the object was also making this loud buzzing hum compared by Betty Jean to the sound a telephone receiver makes. They said that it was so loud that it actually vibrated the car. However, this didn't seem to be the only disturbance. As all of this was happening, they heard what they described as scratching noises on the roof of the car, almost as though someone was walking on top of the vehicle. Douglas claimed that later he found scratch marks in a small dent on the top

of the car. Now suddenly, as all of this is happening, they see a different light. The patrol car had returned with officers Clark and Loeb, and as soon as it came into view with its red light spinning, the strange object went totally dark and vanished. The two officers approached the vehicle as Douglas jumped out and ran up to them, exclaiming, there is something like, weird going on here. So he decided to go with the two officers to where he believed the object had set down, leaving Betty Jean, Anita, and her two young children alone in the stuck car. As perhaps can be expected, the trio of investigators found exactly nothing on the sandy beach where the strange object appeared to have landed. However, as they were gone, something found the remainder of the group.

Sometime after the two officers in Douglas had gone out of sight, Betty Jean claimed to see some a vague, formless creature come out of the nearby woods. She described it as standing about six feet tall, vaguely humanoid. She said she could see it shoulders and a head, although she couldn't make out legs or arms, and insisted that it had no face. In the Harrisburg Patriot News, she actually said that it was something like a gorilla. Now, it moved up to the car and absolutely terrified. Betty Jean yelled for Anita not to look and began laying on the horn to attract the attention of her boyfriend and the two officers. Much like in one of the initial cases of MoMo, the Missouri monster,

one of those crypted superstars, car horns are to bizarre, faceless humanoids, what garlic is to vampires. The creature retreated into the darkness. By the time the three men arrived back at the stuck vehicle, Betty Jean was in a state of high terror, screaming, crying, she actually tried to just take off and run away from the area, trying to get out of there as fast as she possibly could.

The two officers took the whole group back with them to the park administration building, where Betty Jean was still in a hysterical state, refusing to sit anywhere that she couldn't keep an eye on the windows. She was that concerned about being hypervigilant for whatever it was that she had seen. Now, all of the police officers and also some reporters who were involved in this case and with interviewing the witnesses very close after their encounter, were all very impressed by Betty Jean's state of obvious terror. Supposedly, there were bizarre physical traces found in the area the next day, including conical impression, impressions in the sand, and odd spots of liquid, which one of the officers purported to be silicon.

Over the most interesting confirmation of oddness in the area has got to be the plethora of sightings which was occurring in that same area at around the same time. On that same night, a 25-year-old by the name of Peter Fisher claimed that he and a friend saw an odd lighted object, again, in the prescile area. And at roughly around the same time as the Picnicer's citing, there was a report of a small orange light moving at a fast rate of speed kind of over the water. Someone claimed that they watched it for about an hour and a half. And again, that was happening at exactly the same time as the picnic you're citing. Now, this is a pretty spectacular case, though it is worth noting that the National

Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena considered it a likely hoax, and the Air Force considered it likely a misidentification of a raccoon or bear. One thing at a time here, park officials at the time were adamant that there were no bears on pressed aisle. And this seems to be confirmed by the fact that a single black bear made the news in 2007 for a migratory winter stay in the park. Other than that, bears do not frequent the area in the slightest. As for raccoon, even if that could somehow explain the sighting of a six-foot-tall strange humanoid, which, you know, again, was at pretty close range to the witnesses. I'm truly at a loss as to how it could it could explain the lighted object. As for Nycap's view, you know, all I can say to that is I'd like to

reiterate that the officers and reporters and even investigators such as John Keel, who interviewed Betty Jean especially, were convinced of her fear. Whatever had happened, she believed it. As for the other members of the party, you know, they seemed reliable to them as well. So, you know, it's one of those where it is kind of like you have to make up your own mind. I personally find that when you have so many people vouching for the extreme terror of one of the witnesses, it just lends that credibility that whatever happened, no matter how outlandish, it affected them. So on to the case. As with so many of these, we have this fantastic duo of light and sound early in the encounter. As I've said a hundred times before, I really wonder if especially

this kind of humming or buzzing or droning noise that people often associate with paranormal encounters is some sort of psychological primer for the witness. Now, it's interesting as well that in this case we see the interplay of mundane and extra mundane lights. Of course, the lighted objects begins as a simple light which grows closer or perhaps clearer, lands, and then sets off this cosmic disco of beams of light through the surrounding woods. However, if, like the running euphological theory maintains, the lights are being cast by some sort of physical object or even to go further a physical craft. Why did the craft vanish as soon as the lights went out?

Now, I've mentioned it many times before, but it seems to me that light, both mundane and extra mundane, is the language of anomalous phenomena. Here, when the cops showed up with their red lights on and spinning, the craft effectively said, oh, dang, it's the fuzz and simply vanished? I mean, very often when witnesses to anomalous phenomena interact with it, with their flashlights, car lights, whatever, this is when the kind of interaction happens and then the phenomenon of response, whether by diminishing or vanishing or increasing in intensity or proximity or changing form. Now again, though, if like the witnesses believed this UFO was emitting lights, where the heck did the craft go when the lights went out? Douglas and the two officers walked to the area where they had seen it, you know, quote-unquote land and found nothing. No one in the party saw it take off. So looking at this as some sort of

objective physical object that is bound by the same physical laws as everything else in this universe, it really leaves a lot of holes in the narrative. And then just as the UFO just seemingly evaporates, a different disturbance crops up, the humanoid. Now the comparison to a gorilla, of course, calls to mine Bigfoot. Just as so much of this case really resembles a very specific Sasquatch-like creature, Momo, the infamous Missouri monster of 1971. Now this whole case really reminds me of the first reported citing of that of the two young women picnicking, seeing the monster fleeing to their vehicle, and eventually scaring it off with their car horn, much like what happened here. Combined this with both monsters being described as faceless, as well as the inclusion of UFO sightings in each case,

and this seems almost like a proto-momo of sorts. Now truly, I love this description for its kind of specific vagueness. She describes seeing a head and shoulders on a six-foot tall body, but no arms or legs. You know, in that way, it sounds nearly phantom light. And this description crops up a lot in regard to cryptids, almost like they're incomplete fading away or leaving only a terrifying impression of something otherworldly. I also have to be tickled just a little bit

that I just came across this case after mentioning recently how UFOs are so often very similar in imagery or silhouette to mushrooms. And here, Betty Jean described the object as looking like a mushroom. Now, onto something which kind of causes a lot of, I don't know, love lost in the anomalies community, and that is the discrepancy between witness statements. Douglas referred to the object as first triangular, then hexagonal. Betty Jean insisted that it was an oval with lights visible on the edges, and again, that mushroom-like stalk. Now, if we look at this as not an objective object in objective reality, but rather some catalyzing force

translated in the individual's mind, we would kind of expect such variation. And the important thing is that they believed it was something that can't be understated. The fact that regardless of, you know, he thought it was hexagonal, she thought was mushroom, it could even just be difference in what they noticed. But whatever it was, they believed that it was something odd. Now, if it was a hoax, why come up with two different descriptions? Don't you think you'd kind of iron that out beforehand? In addition to this, we have the problem of so many UFO flaps that tons of people come forward to report

completely different objects. I mean, seriously, I swear, UFO flaps are not some an advanced fleet of some ultra-cool, you know, extraterrestrial society. There's like the shady used car lot of the skies. You got a green and yellow triangle here, a little orange ball of light there, a mushroom-shaped thing over there, which in my opinion, at least, again, lends credibility to the concept that what we're dealing with is some sort of event, which is then translated to the individual with varying levels of cohesion. Now finally we have this concept, which I've talked so much about, of perfect timing. It just is amazing to me that so often these things crop up when people are in a spot where they shouldn't really be.

You know, it's like it can only happen then and there. This case reads like some sort of horror story. The car breaks down, one of the party goes for help, the cops come by, they leave. Then as soon as they leave, the remaining trio with two sleeping children in the back, see something in the sky that gets closer and closer and then, as it seems to be scanning the woods with bright lights, the cops come back, it vanishes. Another member of the party goes with the cops to go look for it,

and the remaining people who are left alone in the vehicle, they are then beset by this strange creature. And apparently, this strange creature hung around. Well, if you enjoyed this episode on the Erie Erie Entity, please like, and if you knew to this field of crop circles, go ahead and subscribe to see what weirdness the future may have in store. Till then you can keep up with me on my free blog at patreon.com slash just another tinfoil hat. And please tune in to the podcast somewhere in the skies for the very best anomalous listening,

as well as just another tinfoil hat audio episodes every other Friday. For today, I am Zilia Edgar, signing off. This has been Just Another Tinfoil hat with Zelia Edgar. Be sure to rate and review wherever you get your podcasts. For full video versions of these episodes, be sure to subscribe to Just a another tinfoil hat on YouTube. Thank you for listening. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank.

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