August 21-22: An Eclipse, Disasters, and Suicides?

On August 21, 2017, the shadow of a total solar eclipse will cross the entire continental United States, the first time since 1918, and astrologers, according to Newsweek and other sources, say perhaps it will be a disaster for President Trump. But he may not be the only one looking to the heavens to a troublesome late August.

There are some who are waiting for "something" to happen on August 21 or August 22. We all know that there will be specific talk of certain known events for those days. It is the unknown that is causing some fears to build. 

The solar eclipse has a good deal of people quite excited. Here is a sterling state by state breakdown (here) that you might wish to consult.

The path of the totality will cross several interesting locations.

Bucky Fuller, a Fortean and architect, by Andy Finkle; 

a painting permanently on exhibit at the International Cryptozoology Museum.

Take for instance Carbondale, Illinois, the home of Southern Illinois University, claimant to the seat of all good Buckminster Fuller followers, and right in the middle of the mysterious Little Egypt triangle. 

See #9: The Little Egypt Triangle, Illinois:

Teeshirts are for sale, already, on the Internet.

Then there is also Hopkinsville-Kelly, Kentucky, where the visit of the total eclipse will exactly match the August 21st anniversary of the infamous little creature invasion. I devote an entire chapter to these beasties in Mysterious America: The Ultimate Guide to the Nation’s Weirdest Wonders, Strangest Spots, and Creepiest Creatures.

On the evening of August 21, 1955, five adults and seven children arrived at the Hopkinsville police station claiming that small creatures were attacking their farmhouse and they had been holding them off with gunfire "for nearly four hours." Two of the adults, Elmer Sutton and Billy Ray Taylor, claimed they had been shooting at "twelve to fifteen" short, dark figures who repeatedly popped up at the doorway or peered into the windows. (See more here.)

The creatures association with "aliens" and "spaceships" would be added later in the popular mind. The look of the creatures appear to have influenced the appearance of the Gremlins in the movie of the same name.

Will the New Madrid Earthquake, in some kind of a 2017 version shake the middle of America? Will an asteroid hit the Earth? Is there disaster written in the interaction between the Sun, Moon, and Earth? Some people use to talk about suicides when comets were flying by. Is there really going to be any human impacts due to this well-publicized eclipse? Only time will tell.

We all shall get through it, and August 22, 2017, will come and go. Correct?

Or will some choose suicide? This is actually a dangerous time for "Grunge suicides." And I have asked for people to talk to those who may feel suicidal around this time of the month. There is a traditional one-month syndrome with some suicides, and Chester Bennington did die by hanging on July 20, 2017. 

As I posted on July 26, 2017, "Will Grunge Suicide Copycats Continue?" Specifically I am looking at the date of August 22, for it is the birth date of Layne Staley, a member of Alice in Chains, who OD'ed on April 5, 2002, the anniversary date of Kurt Cobain's suicide.

Buckle your seat belts for August 21 and 22, 2017.

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline number is 1-800-273-TALK (8255).

Hopkinsville + Budd Hopkins / August 21st

Peter Park sends along the following:

One curious twilight-language coincidence I myself have long noticed but which I've never to my recollection seen in accounts of the 1955 Sutton farmhouse alien siege is the fact that Hopkinsville, KY, was the birthplace and home town of famous psychic and "sleeping prophet" Edgar Cayce. I've long been a little surprised that Christian fundamentalists who see anything "occult," "New Age," or "psychic" as "of the Devil" haven't picked up on the Sutton case, with its decidedly demonic-looking "goblins," as just some of Edgar Cayce's buddies paying a rerturn visit to his home town!

Several twilight insights can be said about this.

First off, in January 2008, Mac Tonnies (pictured above) looked at the Hopkinsville + hobgoblin 1955 invasion + Edgar Cayce "name game" link, here. 

(Mac Tonnies was found dead on October 22, 2009, the same day that American comedian and television personality Soupy Sales died. October 22, 362 is remembered for a mysterious fire that destroyed the Temple of Apollo at Daphne outside Antioch.)

One of the 1955 creatures attacks. Illustration from Mysterious America.

The time period of the Kentucky sightings occurred between 8:00 p.m. and 4:45 a.m Central Time. This "attack" occurred on, please note this date, August 21, 1955, through the morning of August 22nd. Tonnies also mentioned Budd Hopkins in conjunction with the Hopkinsville event.  The name game is a natural with Hopkinsville and Budd's last name.

Tonnies wrote at his blog: "Skeptics will point out that 'Hopkins' is hardly an unusual name. But there are enough cases of synchronicity within UFO research alone to justify a closer, more rigorous analysis. Perhaps Fortean events unfold in a barely glimpsed 'Matrix,' their manifestations only partially perceptible to baseline human consciousness."

In my book Mysterious America: The Ultimate Guide to the Nation's Weirdest Wonders, Strangest Spots, and Creepiest Creatures, I dealt with the 1955 events, the name game (like Lafayette = “the little fairy” or “the little enchantment”), the devil meaning behind "hob" and "hobgoblins," and my further interest in links to dates. 

William Mott, rephrasing and extending my notes, shared the following at Mac's blog, 

"Hob" is an ancient appellation for a demon, goblin, or devil. The stretch to "Hobkin" or "Hopkin," i.e., "goblinkind" or "devilkind," is another connection in all this. Hobyahs, hobgoblins, etc. bear this out.

We have here a Fortean case of names and dates colliding across time and space.

Budd Hopkins died on, get this, August 21, 2011, at 1:35 p.m. ET.

What gives with August 21st? Hopkinsville hobgoblins in 1955 and Budd Hopkins' death in 2011.

Dipping into the events of August 21st, I find these quick examples:  In 1945, on August 21st, physicist Harry K. Daghlian, Jr. is fatally irradiated in a criticality incident during an experiment with the Demon core at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, near the 33 degree north latitude. In 1968, Soviet Union-dominated Warsaw Pact troops invade Czechoslovakia. In 1971, Black Panther George Jackson was killed (some say "assassinated") in a shootout with police at the Marin County Courthouse, the last commissioned building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. In 1983, Philippine opposition leader Benigno Aquino, Jr. is assassinated at the Manila International Airport. 

For more on Tonnies's ideas, see his book, The Cryptoterrestrials: A Meditation on Indigenous Humanoids and Aliens Among Us (NY: Anomalist Books, 2010), which was published soon after his death.

I have to point out that the "Hopkinsville invasion" actually took place in Kelly, Kentucky, located 8 miles north of Hopkinsville, and Cayce was born 10 miles away, in Beverly, south of Hopkinsville, straight down Lafayette Road.  

Nevertheless, Cayce is most often said to have been born in "Hopkinsville," and the "little silver hobgoblins" were remembered as having attacked in "Hopkinsville," because of the 1955 newspaper and Air Force accounts associating that town with those events.

Meanwhile, Happy Winter Solstice everyone. In Hopkinsville, Kentucky, this year, that's December 21st. In 2011, the December solstice takes place on Wednesday, December 21 at 11:30 p.m. CST (Thursday, December 22 at 5:30 UTC).