This Week's Weird News 4/19/24

A murder trial involving a suspected Sasquatch summoning, a spooky USO in the Gulf of Mexico, and an escaped circus elephant wandering the streets of a Montana city were among the weird and wondrous stories to cross our desk this past week.

A particularly bizarre murder trial unfolded this past week in the case of an Oklahoma man who killed his fishing buddy out of fear that the victim had summoned Sasquatch to eat him. Initially thought to be pleading guilty by reason of insanity for the July of 2022 incident that sparked worldwide headlines, Larry Sanders' attorney surprised the court by, instead, arguing that he was actually innocent because he acted in self-defense. Despite testifying at the trial that he had seen three Sasquatches seemingly prepared to devour him at the behest of his late friend, the fisherman's reasoning for the killing proved to be unpersuasive and he was ultimately found guilty of first-degree murder.

This past week featured two separate stories of sizeable creatures that wound up unexpectedly finding freedom and subsequently roaming the streets. First, in South Africa, a skirmish between hippopotamuses at a nature reserve resulted in one of the monstrous animals crashing through a fence into a neighboring community where residents were forced to shelter in place as the beast wandered around the Cape Town suburb. Later in the week, residents of the Montana city of Butte found themselves in a similar position when an elephant from a visiting circus managed to escape its enclosure and dashed through traffic until ultimately being wrangled by its handlers.

A pair of intriguing videos involving mysterious glowing objects in both the air and sea popped up on our radar this past week, beginning with footage from a group of friends who spotted a peculiar orb hovering over the city of Melbourne, Australia. Shortly after they began filming the anomalous illumination, the oddity suddenly took off at a remarkable speed, leaving them wondering what it was that they had just seen. Meanwhile, a research vessel operating in the Gulf of Mexico encountered an eerie glowing object that was seemingly sitting on the ocean floor. Strangely, underwater cameras deployed to observe the USO were unable to determine the nature of the weird stationary light that left those on the ship scratching their heads.

For more strange and unusual stories from the past week, check out the Coast to Coast AM website.