Sam the Sandown Clown

For children, the world is still new and full of wonder. Every day is a chance for an adventure, discovering exciting possibilities, and meeting interesting people. Sadly, today's world is a little less safe for kids to explore on their own than it was in the nostalgically idyllic year of 1973. In early May of that year, two kids would make a new friend that may have literally been out of this world. A 7-year-old girl known as "Fay" and her friend, a boy about the same age, took a walk near Lake Common, adjacent to the town of Sandown, on the Isle of Wight off the southern coast of England. Around 4:00 p.m., the pair heard a strange wailing sound coming from across the nearby golf course. They followed the noise until it ceased. The children were walking over a wooden footbridge that crossed a narrow stream when suddenly a hand wearing a blue glove appeared and out from under the bridge a most bizarre being emerged. After some initial slapstick-like fumblings, what eventually followed was an encounter and discussion with a creature whose actions and description seem beyond the imagination of even the most precocious child. Fay and her friend described its appearance as nearly seven feet tall and similar to that of a partly wooden, partly mechanical, partly flesh clown, and not like from any circus you're likely to see. It introduced itself as "...all colours, Sam." Seemingly friendly, and perhaps a little lonely and certainly misunderstood, the children began to ask "Sam" what he was, whether a man or if not that as best they could figure, a ghost. The cryptic answer they received was, " ...Well, not really, but I am in an odd sort of way." The two would spend around 30 minutes visiting with their new friend in his liminal, metal shack, which later vanished. Whether Sam was some "Ultraterrestrial" entity, a sentient cyborg from another world, or merely the "whimsy of a child," this is a story that is precisely the kind we like to talk about... nay, MUST be discussed. And that's what we're going to do in tonight's episode, with the help of our good friends Micah Hanks of the Micah Hanks Program and Rob Morphy from the Cryptonaut podcast. We may never understand what Sam indeed was, but there are enough weird and wonderful elements to this case that neither child nor adult could ever forget meeting Sam the Sandown Ghost Clown.

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