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been a amateur ventriloquist. Did he murder Oliver and conceal his body somewhere? If so, how did he manage it? The entire farm was searched. Aided by the darkness, did this guest simulate Olivers' voice and "throw" it into the air, thereby confusing the other startled guests? Or was Oliver Lerch, by some unknown trick of nature, sucked into another dimension? (Fate, September, 1950) As a corollary to the disappearance of Oliver Lerch, a Mr. H.M. Cranmer of Hammersley Fork, Pennsylvania, Wrote a letter tot he editor of Fate Magazine which we reproduce in part. An event similar to the strange disappearance of Oliver Lerch happened here, about twenty-five years earlier. (This would make it around 1865). It was late in summer when a group of men gathered here for the winter work of cutting pine. Just after dark a dozen men finished their supper at the hotel kept by Uriah Hammersley, and seated themselves on the hotel porch to enjoy their after-dinner smoke. As they sat talking, they noticed a drunken man—a stranger no one had ever seen before— staggering along the road in front of the hotel. The stranger, cursing to himself as drunks often do, passed the hotel without stopping, and continued down the road. After he had gone about two hundred yards, he suddenly began to shout angrily, "damn you, let me go!" The men from the hotel porch ran down to the spot, and Kelleys who lived on a farm an equal distance below—came running from the opposite direction. The stranger was nowhere to be seen, but everyone could hear him still shouting, "damn you, let me go," from overhead. His voice got fainter and fainter and finally stopped. No more drunks will be picked up after Ole Potter, His breath killed two. The dust in the road was several inches thick and the stranger's boot tracks were plainly visible up to the spot where they abruptly ended. On one side of the road was Kelley's cornfield — no tracks could be found in it. On the other side was a creek forty feet away, with a sandbar thirty feet wide. No tracks were found in the sand. In the crowd there were men who could track deer or bear all day on bare ground, but not one of them could, or even did, find a trace of the missing man! Up to 100 years ago the Indians stoutly maintained that the "thunderbird" — a bird that could carry a full grown deer or a man - still existed in the United States. In Maine the Indians called it “Pomola." Sometime after 1500 AD, the Indians killed two "thunderbirds" along the Mississippi River, and carved and painted them, life size, on rocks on the Illinois side. One of the carvings was destroyed by a stone quarry but the other one is still there. The Indians along the upper Mississippi called the bird "Piazzi"—meaning destroyer. In translating "thunderbird" from the Indian languages, the word "eagle" was used. The average American, if he saw a gigantic bird carry off a calf, would be afraid to tell of it, because he would know that no one would believe him. Or, if a pilot saw one, who would believe his story of a bird with a 25 or 30 foot wingspread? 98 PO-Great, WANA=FISH (NATICK LINGO) PO= Great, MOLA= BIRD (NATICK) "Bird"= Primitive Description