On The Track of The Gbahali

This interesting case about cryptids being reported in Liberia was shared by Loren Coleman over at Cryptomundo in which one of his readers, John-Mark Shephard, writes and offers these insights:

“I am an American working in Liberia, West Africa with an international relief and development organization. I have always had a bit of an interest in cryptozoology, and enjoy your website.

Liberia is covered in dense rainforest and has a low population density. Because of its long civil war (now over), it has been almost totally neglected by biologists and other scientists.

In my work in northwestern Liberia I have been hearing reports about several animals which may be of interest to you. Most notable is a large amphibious reptile known in the Bandi language as the “gbahali”.

It is described as being like a crocodile or monitor lizard, but much larger (up to 25 or 30 ft long). It has an armored back with three rows of serrations running down it, a powerful tail, and a short snout with many large teeth. It is known to be an ambush predator, carrying its prey underwater to drown before coming on shore to eat it.

I talked to a number of eyewitnesses who have seen this creature in recent years. I traveled to a village deep in the forest where fishermen used to actually catch these animals. They would use nets and shotguns to kill them, before butchering them and selling the meat in local markets such as in the large town of Massambolahun. They told me that they used to have a skull of the animal in the village, but it was destroyed along with everything else when rebels set fire to the village. When I showed the villagers a picture of a Postosuchus taken off the internet, they all agreed that that is how the head and body of the gbahali looks, although the legs are semi-erect like a crocodile.”

Postosuchus illustration from Wikipedia

Could an extinct species of crocodile have survived, could it be a surviving remnant descended from the first crocodile-like reptiles to live in West Africa that has evolved to shares many features with known living crocodiles like the Nile crocodile or is the creature that natives are seeing even a member of the genus Crocodylus? There are several extinct crocodiles known to have inhabited the region, but the Postosuchus was an rauisuchian, and while it was a close relative of crocodiles, I don’t know if any ever roamed Africa. (Any dinosaur people reading this, please feel free to educate me/send me an ask!) It would be interesting to know since my research found that rauisuchians developed an erect stance independently of, and different from that of dinosaurs, by means of having the femur vertical and angling the acetabulum ventrally, rather than having an angled neck or curve in the femur. This has been referred to as the pillar-erect posture. The erect gait indicates that these animals were clearly active, agile predators, with locomotor superiority over the kannemeyeriid dicynodonts and abundant rhynchosaurs on which they fed. They were successful animals, the largest with skulls up to a meter or more in length, and continued right until the end of the Triassic, when, along with many other large archosaurs, they were killed off by the end Triassic extinction event.

The First Crocodiles

Before the first true crocodiles emerged on the prehistoric scene, there were the phytosaurs (“plant lizards”): archosaurs that looked very much like crocodiles, except that their nostrils were positioned on the tops of their heads rather than the tips of their snouts. You might guess from their name that phytosaurs were vegetarians, but in fact they subsisted on fish and marine organisms in freshwater lakes and rivers worldwide. Among the most noteworthy phytosaurs were Rutiodon and Mystriosuchus.

Later Crocodiles

By the start of the Jurassic period (about 200 million years ago), crocodiles had mostly abandoned their terrestrial lifestyles. This is when we begin to see the marine adaptations that characterize modern crocodiles and alligators: Long bodies, splayed limbs, and narrow, flat, tooth-studded snouts with powerful jaws (a necessary innovation, since crocodiles feasted on dinosaurs and other animals that ventured too close to the water). There was still room for innovation, though: for example, paleontologists believe that Stomatosuchus subsisted on plankton and krill, like a modern grey whale.

Today’s crocodiles and alligators are little changed from their prehistoric ancestors, a telling clue that these reptiles were (and remain) extremely well adapted to their environment.

John-Mark Shephard went on to say:

“The river in which these creatures are said to live is very remote, passing through large areas of unihabited forest. They are said to mainly be seen during the rainy season, when they travel upstream to look for food. They are greatly feared by the local population, because they have been known to kill people.

As recently as this November 2007, someone was attacked and killed by a large unknown animal near a village called Gelema, on that river. The United Nations police went to investigate, and found out that only the man’s head and a few body parts were left on the river bank. In this same village, the town meeting house was built according to the length of a gbahali that was killed there in years gone by.

I know this might sound sensational, like a bad monster movie or something. I have lived in Liberia and have heard my share of tall tales about dwarfs and jinns and so forth. However, there is nothing fantastic or supernatural in the accounts I have been hearing. To them this is just another kind of water animal, albeit a very large and dangerous one! I talked to at least three people in different villages who have had encounters with these animals.”

The civil war has been over in Liberia since 2003. The country is in the process of rebuilding and is fairly stable now. But could these creatures really be living there? Rare pygmy hippos are surviving hidden in Liberia’s forests against all the odds, despite two civil wars that have ravaged their habitat. According to British scientists, the creatures, which are almost never seen in the wild, were spotted in Liberia’ Sapo National Park using special camera traps.

The West African country is one of the last refuges of the endangered pygmy hippopotamus but conservationists had feared recent forest destruction and poaching might have wiped them out.

“We were delighted to discover that a population still persists there, but remain highly concerned for the species, which continues to face significant threats from poaching and habitat degradation,” Collen said in a statement.

The animals — whose closest living relatives, besides the common hippopotamus, are whales — hide themselves away in the rapidly shrinking Upper Guinean forest ecosystem.

The forest has been hit by unsustainable logging and mining operations, which were especially devastating during the civil wars. When considering that only 10 percent of the original Upper Guinean forest is left, of which Liberia accounts for about 40 percent, it’s disconcerting to realise both the rarely seen, endangered pygmy hippo and this “Gbahli” could be wiped out before their habitats can recover. We may never discover what the Gbahali really is.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rauisuchia, dinosaurs.about.com/od/typesofdinosaurs/a/crocodilians.htm, cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/gbahali/, dalje.com/en-lifestyle/liberias-pygmy-hippos-survive-two-civil-wars/130504

Cryptid Chronicles readers, what do YOU think??

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Basilisks & the Crowing Crested Snakes

A fabulous reptilian monster of ancient and medieval legend is the part serpent, part rooster  Basilisk, which is usually described as a crested snake, and sometimes as a cock with a snake’s tail (or having the head and legs of a cock, a snake-like tail, and a body like a bird’s).

The Basilisk is often confused with the cockatrice, though stories of the basilisk show that it is not completely distinguished from the cockatrice, it is usually depicted without wings.  Mostly, the basilisk should be purely snake-like in form, while the cockatrice would have a most definite chicken-like form with hints of the reptilian, so it’s easy to see how the two would be interchangeable and easily confused.

The basilisk was depicted in a few illuminated manuscripts in the Middle Ages but appeared much more often as an ornamental detail in church architecture, adorning capitals and medallions. The best representation of the basilisk is found in the decorative field of heraldry.

In medieval lore, depending on source but always in widespread folk belief, the Basilisk was born of a snake egg hatched by a cock or came from an misshapen egg laid in a dunghill by a seven-year-old cock during the time that Sirius was high in the heavens. The Basilisk is also mentioned in many famous works of literature including chapter XVI of The Zadig, by Voltaire.

The foremost description we have for this beast is found in Pliny’s Natural History, a compilation of ancient (and mostly Greek) sources written in Rome in 77 AD. In it Pliny lists over 60 sources, most of which have been lost. After discussing the ‘catoblepas’ (another mythical creature) and its ability to kill people with its vision, Pliny describes the basilisk:

“The basilisk serpent also has the same power. It is a native of the province of Cyrenaica, not more than 12 inches long, and adorned with a bright white marking on the head like a sort of diadem. It routs all snakes with its hiss, and does not move its body forward in manifold coils like the other snakes but advancing with its middle raised high. It kills bushes not only by its touch but also by its breath, scorches up grass and bursts rocks. Its effect on other animals is disastrous: it is believed that once one was killed with a spear by a man on horseback and the infection rising through the spear rising not only the rider but also the horse. Yet to a creature so marvelous as this — indeed kings have often wished to see a specimen when safely dead — the venom of weasels is fatal: so fixed is the decree of nature that nothing shall be without its match.”

The antique Romans called him “regulus” or little king, not only because of his crown, but because he terrorized all other creatures with his deadly look and poison. Its gaze was reportedly lethal and caused “instant death”. His color was yellow, sometimes with a kind of blackish hue. Pliny the Elder  mentioned a white spot on his head, which could be misinterpreted as a diadem or a crown. Others speak of three spikes on his forehead.

Cyrenaica is the historical name of the eastern region in Libya. Geologically, Cyrenaica rests on a mass of Miocene limestone that tilts up steeply from the Mediterranean Sea and falls inland with a gradual descent to sea level again. Cyrenaica was colonized by the Greeks beginning in the 7th century B.C.  Primariliy, the basilisk was largely confined to northern Africa and western Europe but similar creatures have been reported in many other parts of the world.  Iceland’s equivalent was a basilisk-like creature called the Skoffin.

The last recorded appearance of a Basilisk was in 1587 in Warsaw. There, two girls were killed by its breath, while playing in their cellar. Frightened citizens organized a hunt for the monster, but after finding and killing a small snake, declared the affair finished.

It seems improbable that there could be any foundation in reality for such a weird creature as the Basilisk, and it is possible that this fearsome creature really evolved from exaggerated travelers’ tales of the horned adder or the hooded cobra, confused with such awesome reptiles as the Gila monster.

Yet, as documented by British zoologist Dr. Karl P. N. Shuker in his Extraordinary Animals Worldwide (1991), an animal surprisingly alike has been reported living in central Africa and the Caribbean. Known as the crowing crested cobra, it is — according to those who claim to have seen it — an extremely large, venomous male serpent with a cock’s-comb-like crest, facial wattles, and a cockerel’s crow. Over the years various reports have been published about this animal. In 1944, for example, a Malawi physician, Dr. J. O. Shircore, declared in the journal African Affairs that he possessed parts of one of these creatures — a portion of the neck and the skeleton of the comb.

Crowing crested cobra, as reconstructed by Karl Shuker.

Caribbean Crowing Snake
In 1829, a medical doctor reported he saw a crested snake, dead and slightly decomposed, in Jamaica. Then also in Jamaica around 1845 the English naturalist Philip Gosse collected many eyewitness accounts of a mysterous wattled snake that could allegedly crow like a rooster which natives call the Caribbean Crowing Snake but which is alternately known as the Crowing Crested Cobra  which has also been reported in the West Indies.  It is described as four feet (1.3metres) long, with a thick body. It is a dull yellowish brown colour with dark spots with red wattles and has  a  red  crest like a rooster. This snake also apparently crows like a rooster and can spray it’s venom.  Then a  snake with wattles was shot in Jamaica on March 30, 1850, by the son of Jasper Cargill. In the 1940s the belief in this snake was still apparent  among the inhabitants of the Island  of Dominica. It was supposed to live in a cave, situated in the hills of the northern part of the island, where a gigantic stone heap, was said to be proof of its activities.

Crowing Crested Cobra
For centuries a larger, very venomous counterpart called the Inkhomi (killer) has been reported in Africa (from at least seven different nations in Africa including Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Tanzania). Partial remains have occasionally been obtained but never formally identified with any species known to date.

In George M. Eberhart’s Mysterious Creatures: A Guide to Cryptozoology, the following is accounted:  Mystery snake of East and Central Africa. Variant names:  Bubu (on the Lower Zambezi River in Mozambique),Hongo (Ngindo/Bantu), Inkhomi (Ngoni/Bantu and Nyakyusa-Ngonde/Bantu, “the killer”), Kovoko (Nyam-wezi/Bantu), Mbobo (Rungwa/Bantu), N’gok-wiki (Gbaya/Ubangi), Ngoshe (Bemba/Bantu), Songo (Yao/Bantu, “strikes down at the head”). Physical description: Cobralike snake. Length, up to 20 feet. Buff-brown or grayish-black. Bright red, forward-projecting crest on its head. Scarlet face. The male has a pair of red facial wattles. The dorsal vertebra of one specimen had articulating surfaces of 8x9 millimeteres. Behavour: Arboreal. May also be aquatic. Extremely vicious. The male makes a loud sound like a rooster crowing. The female makes a hen-like clucking sound. Both male and female emit a warning cry of “chu-chu-chu-chu.” Feeds on maggots from rotting flesh; it supposedly kills animals so that maggots will grow on the carcasses. Also eats hyraxes. Attacks humans by lunging down from a tree toward the head or face. The venom is extremely toxic, resulting in death almost instantaneously. Habitat: Trees, hills, rocks. Distribution: KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa; Mozamibique; Zimbabwe; Malawi; Zambia; Tanzania; Central Africa Republic. Significant sightings: From a witch doctor in Malawi, J.O. Shircore obtained a plate of bone from the crest (with bits of skin attached), some neck bones, and several vertebrae from at least two different specimens of this snake. In May 1959, John Knott accidently ran over a 7-foot black snake in his Land Rover in the Lake Kariba area of Zimbabwe. It has a symmetrical crest on its head that could be erected by raising five bony structures.

This African mystery snake that is said to have a frill like a cobras, and a crest on their head and wattle-like skin on the throat, reportedly crowing like roosters, able to spray it’s venom – are all characteristics quite reminiscent of the basilisk of Greek legend. Perhaps, that “instant death” quality was an exaggeration of the basilisk’s venom-spraying ability.

It could simply be that legends and stories of crowing crested cobras are passed around the world by travellers and adopted by some people as their own. Or maybe there is an unknown hybrid snake creature , or at least there was once, in some parts of the world and the stories were passed down the generations.

So perhaps there is a real reason the Basilisk was always presented as an icon of fear - from the reports of the cresting crowing snakes, it’s easy to see why the “king of the serpents” is the most dangerous serpent that ever existed on Earth.

It is really possible that it was ancient travelers’ tales of the above mentioned reptiles, or the crowing crested cobra, that originally gave rise to the myth of the Basilisk!

Sources: newanimal.org/bsnake.htm, angelfire.com/bc2/cryptodominion/serpents.html, strangeark.com/reprints/beasts.html, occultopedia.com/b/basilisk.htm, monsters.monstrous.com/basilisk.htm, wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrenaica, cryptozoo-oscity.blogspot.com/2010/07/crowing-crested-cobra.html

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Cave Demons and Giant Bat-like Creatures

Large bat-like creature sighting in California

Normally, only UFO and extraterrestrial sightings are reported to MUFON but on Saturday, June 5, 2010 an interesting account of a bat-like creature, purported to have been seen near Lodi, California was reported:

MUFON Case 23617
2010-05-14 at 02:45
Lodi, California

“I had taken my dogs for a run early in the morning - about 2:30 on May 14th 2010. I was southeast of Lodi on Live Oak Road where the road to the winery intersects. There are outside lights and I saw something crouched in the road which I thought at first was a coyote eating something. Then it stood up and was about 4 1/2 feet tall so I knew it wasn’t a coyote. It stooped back down and appeared to gather up whatever it had been eating; gave a little hop and soared away over the grapevines in an up down, up down motion. The wings sort of glistened in the light and did not seem to have feathers. I thought it looked like a gigantic bat, but have never heard of a bat that big. The dogs seemed to be frightened and jumped into the car. I was so amazed at what I saw.”

What are they?

According to mainstream science, the world’s biggest bat is the Bismark flying fox, an animal that never gets larger than six feet from wingtip to wingtip. According to cryptozoology, mainstream scientists might be wrong. Many sightings from seemingly reliable people suggest that this might not be the case.

Giant Bat People or Just Giant Bats of Lore?

Sightings of mysterious human-sized bats have been reported in all corners of the world. They are described as having black or gray fur, a monkey-like face, clawed feet and a 10-15 foot wingspan.



In Brazil they are called “bat people.” The rainforests of Java echo the cries of a bat creature called the “Ahool” because of its distinct “a-hool” vocalization.

The island of Java, not very far from the Bismark flying fox’s home of New Guinea, is supposed to harbor this cryptid bat with a twelve-foot wingspan. The Ahool eats fish and has gray fur and a flattened face with huge black eyes, with its head overall looking like a monkey’s head. It is not attributed with supernatural powers, and seems like such a plausible animal that it has drawn the attention of naturalists. If a giant bat lived anywhere, the dense rainforests of Java would be a likely place.

In Vietnam they are known as “night flyers.” These winged humanoids are generally 5 feet tall with eerie feminine features. They are known to swoop down on their victims and attack several times.

Another plausible place for an undiscovered giant bat to live is Cameroon, a country in Africa where scientists have reported seeing a very similar bat. This creature is apparently called the olitiau by locals. It also has a twelve-foot wingspan with thin membranous skin and a monkey-like face, but its fur is pure black. The beings are described as terrifying to look upon, with what looks like a mixture of human or monkey and bat-like features in the face. Long, wild, disheveled, hair around the head, much like a mane, with pitch black fur covering the entirety of it’s body. The body of the fearsome creature stands about the size of a human being upon clawed feet and it’s teeth which can clearly be seen, are razor sharp, pointed daggers. It is regarded with a great deal of superstition and fear. It is not improbable that both of these bats might have monkey-like faces. Bats have a notoriously wide variety of head shapes, and many known species have heads resembling different animals such as foxes, dogs, lemurs or even horses!

Another possible African giant bat is the kongamato, which has also been interpreted as a pterosaur by some people. This creature is not quite so large, has reddish fur, and has a long snout instead of a flattened face. Madagascar, a large island just off the coast of Africa, has tales about a bat called the fangalabolo, with a wingspan larger than 5 feet, bigger than any other bat known to live in Madagascar.

The Guiafairo of Senegal in West Africa is described as a giant bat that is very smelly and often manages to terrify people by making its way indoors. It is hated very much, and its name translates to “the fear that flies by night.” The Guiafairo is mentioned in Karl Shuker’s “The Secret Animals of Senegambia” in the November 1998 issue of Fate Mag where it is described as having a human face and is said to be able to appear behind locked doors.

The mlularuka of Tanzania is perhaps the most tame and ordinary of undiscovered African bats. Like known species of giant bats, it is a fruit-eater and thus is mainly spoken of as a pest to agriculture. It is described as being the size of a dog.

Other giant bat reports sound less plausible and shade off into an area where it is nearly impossible to separate the few facts that might exist from the masses of folklore and the paranormal that these alleged facts are buried in. One such creature is the sasabonsam from Ghana in Africa. Depicted in folklore as a bearded human with bat wings, the one known body (which has sadly disappeared, along with the only photograph of it) was described as being far less human than the legends say. It was an animal like a huge bat, with a twenty-foot wingspan and stiff black-and-white spotted fur. It had huge teeth and heavy ridges over its eyes.

The Indonesian orang-bati is even more mythical. These human/bat monsters live in an extinct volcano on the island of Seram and abduct children. Still, some researchers working in the field of cryptozoology think that a real bat may be hiding behind these fantastical tales.

Giant vampire bat reports are generally kept separate from giant bat reports, mainly because the giant vampire bat is large for a vampire bat, but still medium-sized when compared to bats in general.

In Mexico, an ancient Mayan cult worshiped the “death bat.”

Around 100 B.C., a peculiar religious cult grew up among the Zapotec Indians of Oaxaca, Mexico. The cult venerated an anthropomorphic monster with the head of a bat, an animal associated with night, death, and sacrifice. This monster soon found its way into the pantheon of the Quiché, a tribe of Maya who made their home in the jungles of what is now Guatemala. The Quiché identified the bat-deity with their god Zotzilaha Chamalcan, the god of fire.

Popol Vuh, a Mayan sacred book, identifies Zotzilaha as not a god, but a cavern, “The House of Bats”. Zotzilaha was home to a type of bat called camazotz; one of these monsters decapitated the hero Hunahpú. Camazotz has been translated as “death bat” and “snatch bat”. It is recorded in chapter 10 of this book that the Camazotz’s call was similar to eek, eek. A vastly different story appears in Chapter 3. Here a demon called Camalotz, or “Sudden Bloodletter”, clearly a single entity, is identified as one of four animal demons which slew the impious first race of men.

In the Latin American region, it seems that the ancient belief in the “death bat” survives even to the present day. Several cultures have traditions of bat-demons or winged monsters; for example, legends of the h?ik’al, or Black-man, still circulate among the Zotzil people of Chiapas, Mexico. Perhaps revealingly, the H?ik’al is sometimes referred to as a “neckcutter”. Other bat-demons include the soucouyant of Trinidad and the tin tin of Ecuador.

Yet another similar creature appears in the folklore of rural Peru and Chile. The chonchon is a vampire-type monster; and it is truly bizarre, even for a legendary creature. It is said that after a person’s death, the head will sometimes sprout enormous ears and lift off from the shoulders. This flying head is the Chonchon; its sound, as recorded by Jorge Luis Borges, was like tui-tui-tui. Could the legends of the Chonchon have sprung from the same source as the Camazotz legends?

But what exactly was the basis for the Camazotz legend? Most archaeologists believe that the monster was based on the common vampire bat (Desmodus rotundus), a bat traditionally associated with bloodletting and sacrifice. Another suspect is the false vampire bat (Vampyrum spectrum), due to its large size and habit of attacking prey around the head or neck.

One of the most prominent and commonly mentioned features of the Camazotz is “a nose the shape of a flint knife”, which could be an exaggerated interpretation of the nose-leaf possessed by members of the Phyllostomidae, or leaf-nosed bats. The vampire bat is a relative or member of this group; thus we are once more forced to look at D. rotundus, or its relatives, as suspects.

In 1988, a species of fossil bat related to Desmodus rotundus, but 25 percent larger, was described as D. draculae. It was described on the basis of two specimens from Monagas State, Venezuela. A third specimen from São Paulo State, Brazil, was described in a 1991 article by E. Trajano and M. de Vivo. The Brazilian specimen had not yet been dated when the article was written, but the two biologists suggest a “relatively recent age” for the skeleton. They refer to reports circulating among local natives of large bats which attack cattle and horses; these reports may suggest that the bat still lives. Its recent age and large range suggest that the bat could have co-existed with the Quiché, giving rise to the legends of the Camazotz. Trajano and de Vivo also speculate that D. draculae may have fed on larger prey than did normal-sized vampire bats; possibly even humans?

Several other stories supporting the idea of a large bat-like creature have come out of Latin America in the last century. A 1947 report of a creature presumed to have been a living pterosaur may in fact have been of a large bat. J. Harrison saw five “birds” with a wingspan of about 12 feet. Harrison’s birds were brown, featherless, and beaked.

The next report of a bat-like monster from the area is a story told by a Brazilian couple, the Reals. One night in the early 1950s, they were walking through a forest outside of Pelotas, Brazil, when they saw two large “birds” in a tree, both of which alighted on the ground. Although reported as winged humanoids, the proximity of the sighting area to the Ribeira Valley, where the Brazilian specimen of D. draculae was found, forces one to wonder whether the Reals’ “birds” were actually bats.

In March, 1975, a series of animal mutilations swept the countryside near the Puerto Rican town of Moca, and during the incident a man named Juan Muñiz Feliciano claimed that he was attacked by a large, gray-feathered creature. These bird-like creatures were seen numerous times during the outbreak.

These reports didn’t gain real notoriety until the mid-1970s, when a number of sightings of large birds or bats surfaced in Rio Grande Valley, Texas. The first report came from the town of San Benito, where three people reputedly encounters with a bald-headed creature. But rumors had long circulated among the Mexican inhabitants of the town about a large bird-like creature, believed to make tch-tch-tch sounds.

On New Year’s Day, 1976, two girls near Harlingen watched a large, birdlike creature with a “gorilla-like” face, a bald head, and a short beak. The next day, a number of three-toed tracks were found in the field where the creature had stood. On January 14, Armando Grimaldo said he was attacked by the creature at Raymondville. He said it was black, with a monkey’s face and large eyes. Further reports surfaced from Laredo and Olmito, with a final sighting reported from Eagle Pass on January 21.

The reports cited above, as well as countless others which await careful researchers, support a conclusion that a mysterious winged creature exists in the deserts and jungles of Mesoamerica. The prominence of the bat in Latin American mythology and the discovery of the recently-extinct Desmodus draculae in South America point to the possible identity of the creature as a large, as-of-yet unknown bat, rather than a living pterosaur, as is generally supposed.

New Species or Ancient Beast?

A number of bat species that are just as big or bigger might be out there, waiting for science to formally recognize them.

In this ever changing world, it seems as if mysteries and bizarre creatures are around every dark corner and can be found in deep bodies of murky water. They appear in abandoned buildings, colossal tracks of desolate land, spooky swamps and the vastness of our underground and cliff side cave systems.

The show ” Lost Tapes” ran a program on Animal Planet, that was all about these mysterious winged beings.

The show highlighted famed naturalist , Ivan T. Sanderson who journeyed on an expedition in 1932, to the Rain Forest of Cameroon and found an extraordinarily fearsome entity. The report given by Sanderson stated upon entering a cave, the entire exploring party were swooped down upon, by giant bat-like beings. Ivan’s exact words described them as, “Black as coal with membranous wings and long sharp teeth!”



Other surprising accounts come from soldiers who have been at war, throughout our history. A large number of men have come forward and given testimony to this creature, that comes soaring out, when the sun begins to set in the sky. Maybe it is because the soldiers are exposed to the open of the night, when hunkered down in the fields, that they have had so many sightings.

Although not as common in the United States as other parts of the world, it has been sighted on our soil numerous times. The most widely recorded account belongs to mountaineer Butch Whittaker. The sighting took place in the year 1994, when Butch was out preparing to climb Mt. St. Helens, in the state of Washington. In the broad light of day, the creature soared overhead near the volcano top and even though Butch was in a state of disbelief about what he was seeing, he managed to get several photographs of the winged humanoid, before it completely disappeared. It was later described by Butch as having blood-red eyes, purplish toned skin, wings of a Pterodactyl and the head and face of monkey mixed with the features of a bat. It was immediately dubbed, “Batsquatch.”

On the descriptions of the Cave Demon, ALL who have had an encounter and lived to tell about it, state that it is clearly a bat/something (human or primate) type of creature.

So once again we find our self asking the same question, What are they?

Sources: cryptoflorida.webs.com/apps/blog/show/3948914-large-bat-creature-sighted-in-california, newanimal.org/gbats.htm, kellyskrazynews.blogspot.com/2010/02/cave-demons.html, blueroadrunner.com/camazotz.htm

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What is the Scariest Cryptid You’d Never Want to Meet?

Madagascar and Africa’s Mysterious Kalanoro

The world is rife with legends and alleged sightings of hairy ape-men. The United States has the skunk ape in the southeast, the Sasquatch in the northwest and the Menehune in Hawaii.  Ireland has Leprechauns and Nepal the Yeti.

Not to be left out of the worldwide menagerie of hairy wild men, the island of Madagascar that lies off the southeastern tip of the African continent has the mysterious Kalanoro.

The indigenous peoples of Madagascar are a mixture of over a dozen tribes with overlapping cultures and a bubbling brew of spicy histories. Many are superstitious and still practice customs that raise the eyebrows of Westerners not steeped in the ancient lore of this African nation.

Among the diverse peoples of Madagascar, none pays as much obeisance to a rich panoply of gods and spirits as the Betsimisaraka (translation: “the numberless inseparables)” who live along the east coast of the island. To the Betsimisaraka, mermaids, spirits, signs and omens, and little men with long hair that dwell in the wild forests and steal food from villagers at night, are a daily part of their life.

The Kalanoro are diminutive folk said to be no more than two feet high. It is claimed these little men can be found throughout Madagascar. Other tribes in other areas of the island agree the Kalanoro exist but they call them by different names such as Kotoky or Vazimba. The  Antakarana and Tsimihety peoples claim the Kalanoro in their region mostly dwell in caverns.

According to the people of Madagascar the Kalanoro have been on Madagascar for more than two thousand years. When people migrated to the island the first encounters occurred.

Yet encounters with Kalanoro are rare. They tend to hide deep in Madagascar’s verdant rain forests. Witnesses who have happened upon these little men agree that the Kalanoro have very long fingernails and a reddish cast to their furtive eyes. Many claim that the Kalanoro have feet that are reversed. If you wish to track one of those little men, they assert, you must remember to follow their tracks backwards. Successful trackers have testified they have followed footprints to areas with evidence of Kalanoro  meals. The remains of meals are sometimes found by forest trees or among rocks along riverbanks. Raw seafood, vegetables and grain are said to make up the diet of the elusive Kalanoro.

Eyewitnesses do exist. According to Travel Africa Magazine, “Eloi saw his first Kalanoro in a rice paddy behind his village and describes it as ‘a little man, less than a meter tall, with hair all over his body and long fingernails.’ They can apparently be lured by the irresistible smell of frying pistachio nuts, but attempts to catch them are usually unsuccessful because their feet point backwards and hunters invariably track them in the wrong direction. In 1889, however, a capture was reported to the Royal Geographical Society and, in 1924, Chase Salmon Osborn described a Kalanoro sighting that he assumed ‘must have been a honeymoon couple’ because they were making love by a campfire. Despite their human traits and telepathic abilities, Kalanoro are considered animals.” [1]

The tale of the British Royal Geographical Society capturing a Kalanoro in 1889 is ubiquitous throughout the island. A check of the Society’s archives, however, reveals no such specimen was ever seen let alone caught.

Most of the Kalanoro are said to have great magical powers. Like Sampson, the Kalanoro’s long hair endows them with almost supernatural strength. Supposedly their powers are transferable for some “mosies” (herbalists) in Madagascar claim that potions of magical powders impregnated with ground Kalanoro hair provides the user with great mystical powers.

Madagascar mosies also act as mediums. Many work with the spirits of the Kalanoro whom they claim have great healing powers. The Kalanoro are thought to be spirits of nature. Those who seek the Kalanoro mediums do so because they think they have become cursed by inadvertently trespassing into a region that is sacred to the Kalanoro.

In a 1964 article, the author Bacil Kirtley asserted that the Kalanoro were dwarfish creatures. He compared them to the European legends of elves and trolls that stole food, replaced human children with their own children and generally caused mischief and mayhem. The natives of Madagascar roundly reject that description. [2]

Run ins with the Kalanoro, although rare, seem to come in waves. This passage recounts some contemporary encounters: “How recent are the encounters with these hairy, three-toed Kalanoro with their hooked fingers and aggressive habits? Professor Joe Hobbs of the University of Missouri-Columbia’s Department of Geography, studied them, while he was with the local tribes in the Ankarana Special Reserve, Madagascar, during the late 1990s. On May 15, 2000, when Hobbs wrote his report, he talked of how the people of the village of Ambalakedi consider Andoboara Cave “sacred because on three separate occasions, most recently just two years ago, grief-stricken parents whose children had wandered into the forest had recovered them alive here” after food was left out for the Kalanoro in exchange for their children’s return. [3]

Like the island of Papua New Guinea, Madagascar’s mysterious and bizarre wildlife is a veritable feast for researchers and cryptozoologists. The island teams with creatures ranging from giant hissing cockroaches to screaming lizards. Thousands of other creatures are thought to be uncategorized. Among these are man-eating plants and antelopes, the Bibyolona ( a kind of miniature Centaur), and of course the Kalanoro.

Whether the Kalanoro are truly an offshoot of Man yet to be confirmed or simply an island myth built over several millennia, the fact remains that it is curious that so many diverse cultures spread across so many different lands all have legends of little people.

US Navy SEALs see Kalanoro in Africa?

In 2006 at Cryptomundo, Loren Coleman reported that a US Navy SEAL unit encountered a group of strange apes in the Democratic Republic of Congo.  According to Loren, the information came from a reliable source and fit in with the area’s history of weird cryptids. A drawing by Harry Trumbore, was illustrated for the book The Field Guide to Bigfoot, by Loren Coleman and Patrick Huyghe and depicted the kalanoro, a “short, three-toed, bipedal, water-dwelling, mean, scruffy-hair hominoid” apparently known to tribes in Madagascar. From the blog post:

“I’ve learned, through a confidential source, that at least one unit of the US Navy SEAL (Sea, Air, Land) has had a remarkable recent encounter with unknown apes in Africa. And a video was taken. We are seeking additional confirmation and other eyewitnesses. Have any hints of this story come your way?

Due to the sensitive nature of this former US Navy SEAL’s intelligence-gathering work, at this time we cannot reveal his identity. Hopefully our posting this initial information will develop other sources and confirmations from current and former SEAL members involved, and from interested researchers with hints of the story.

What the former SEAL relates is that he was involved in covert operations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo between 1997 and 2002. According to his account, his team observed a group of thirteen “chimpanzee-like” creatures between 4.5 to 5 feet tall, uniformly gray all over their bodies, with rows of seemingly porcupine-like quills running the length of their backs.

The unidentified apes walked bipedally and were observed by the SEAL team in the act of killing another animal. When the creatures became excited or agitated, the quills or spines stood erect from their bodies.

According to this informant, the US Navy SEAL team took three minutes of video footage of these creatures, but this tape apparently has been classified, due to their mission. This SEAL member still has his mission maps and is able to pinpoint the area of the encounter with this large group of bipedal apes.

The involvement of a US Navy SEAL team would indicate that their activity employed water as a means of transportation, and/or they were working in an area involving a lake, river, or swamp.

What could these strangely-haired unknown apes be? Their description, overtly, sounds like similar hairy short upright creatures (with bizarre spiked hair) known to inhabit areas near certain bodies of water and from specific islands. Various regional names (chupacabras, kappa) hide the fact they all resemble each other in their number of digits, spiked hair, aggressiveness, and aquatic habits. But let’s just look to Africa alone, today.

Weird rumblings have been heard from the Congo for decades. In Ivan T. Sanderson’s Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life, there is mention of animal collector Charles Cordier finding the small tracks of what the locals called the kakundakari in the Congo in 1961.

I have previously written about an African hominoid that matches the Congolese reports of the Navy SEAL, those of the Madagascar natives’ kalanoro, a short, three-toed, bipedal, water-dwelling, mean, scruffy-hair hominoid.

All the tribes of island of Madagascar, located off the east coast of Africa, know of the Kalanoro, according to folklorist Raymond Decary, who researched the common themes connecting the stories of the Kalanoro back in the 1950s. In 1889, a capture of a Kalanoro was reported to the Royal Geographical Society. In 1924, Chase Salmon Osborn described his sighting of two Kalanoro mating.

The Father of Cryptozoology also took an interest in them. These “legends may be fantastic,” wrote Belgium cryptozoologist Bernard Heuvelmans in 1955, but “they are found all over Madagascar, and it would be odd if they were utterly without foundation,” especially given the fact that “some areas of Madagascar are still almost unexplored, such as the Ambongo reserve and the lonely Isalo mountains, and there are still some 3 or 4 million hectares of virgin forest…”

The aggressive nature of the Kalanoro comes through in a few accounts, and mirrors the behavior in the SEAL’s account. The Kalanoro are also known to abduct children, and search Madagascar’s villages for food.

How recent are the encounters with these hairy, three-toed Kalanoro with their hooked fingers and aggressive habits? Professor Joe Hobbs of the University of Missouri-Columbia’s Department of Geography, studied them, while he was with the local tribes in the Ankarana Special Reserve, Madagascar, during the late 1990s. On May 15, 2000, when Hobbs wrote his report, he talked of how the people of the village of Ambalakedi consider Andoboara Cave “sacred because on three separate occasions, most recently just two years ago, grief-stricken parents whose children had wandered into the forest had recovered them alive here” after food was left out for the Kalanoro in exchange for their children’s return.

If the US Navy SEAL report is correct, there may be something quite similar to the Kalanoro living in the Congo area too.

And if the Congo SEAL encounter was so very extraordinary, others may have talked about, it in passing. Since this “unknown hominoid” piece of the mission does not involve national security, but may extend cryptozoological knowledge, it is time to learn more, release the video footage, and analyze what was seen.

Do you have further information on this US Navy report? Please send what you’ve heard our way, via the comments’ section or let us know you want further contact through back channels.”

Footnotes

[1] “Enigma: Madagascar’s Mythical Creatures,” Eveleigh, Mark, Travel Africa Magazine [2] “Unknown Hominids and New World Legends,” Kirtley, Bacil F., Western Folklore, Vol. XXIII, 1964. [3] “Kalanoro,” Coleman, Lauren, Cryptomundo.com 

Sources: helium.com/items/1768274-madagascars-kalanoro, boingboing.net/2006/01/13/us-navy-seals-see-un.html, cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/navy-seals-video

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What is the Scariest Cryptid You’d Never Want to Meet?

New expedition to seek out Mokele Mbembe

Stephen McCullah is leading an expedition to the jungles of Africa in search of a living dinosaur.

Naming their trip the “Newmac Expedition” McCullah and his colleagues are hoping to discover a plethora of new flora and fauna as they search for evidence of the legendary creature along the Congo river. A fundraising campaign with a goal of $27,000 has been initiated to secure funds for the trip which is scheduled to begin on June 26th.

“We are in the process of looking at live methods for capture of large animals,” said McCullah. “We will be attempting to bring a tranquilizer rifle, but there are many issues and unknowns we will have to overcome to subdue an animal like Mokèlé-mbèmbé with a tranquilizer gun.”


Congo River Africa - No less than 40 percent of the entire world oxygen production comes from the tropical forests in the Congo river area. Besides these, the area also is an incredible source of fresh fruits, minerals and unique plants that are used all over the world in different industries.

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Jurassic Lark? Expedition to Seek Living Dinosaurs in Africa

A young Missouri man has turned to the Internet in search of investors for his expedition into the remote jungles of Africa seeking to document undiscovered flora and fauna. That is not so unusual, but one of the creatures he hopes to find is: a living dinosaur.

The region Stephen McCullah, the organizer of the expedition, has chosen to explore is the reputed home of the Mokèlé-mbèmbé, a dinosaur-like creature said to be up to 35 feet long (11 meters), with brownish-gray skin and a long, flexible neck. Many locals believe that it lives in the caves it digs in riverbanks, and that the beast feeds on elephants, hippos and crocodiles.

McCullah posted his pitch on Kickstarter.com asking for $27,000 in donations so that he and his friends can launch the Newmac Expedition, “one of the first expeditions in this century with the goal of categorizing plant and animal species in the vastly unexplored Republic of the Congo.” The preliminary four-man venture is slated to launch June 26.

Though the team members largely lack formal education in biology or zoology, they “anticipate discovering hundreds of new insect, plant and fish species during the course of our research. There is also the legitimate hope of discovering many reptile and mammalian species. We have received reports…in the region of eyewitnesses seeing canine-sized tarantulas, large river dwelling sauropods, and a species of man-eating fish,” McCullah wrote on the website.



Never mind dinosaurs, which have been extinct for millions of years, for a moment. Finding a spider the size of a dog would be remarkable enough, as the largest-known tarantula, the Goliath birdeater, lives in South America and has a leg span of “only” a foot.

When asked if he really expected to discover monster tarantulas and dinosaurs, McCullah told Life’s Little Mysteries, “We don’t necessarily expect to find concrete evidence of Mokèlé-mbèmbé (or any other creatures claimed to have been seen in the region) on the first expedition, but we believe there’s a good chance during that initial three months that we will find hard evidence of its presence in the area if it is there.”

Even if McCullah’s team finds that evidence, most cryptozoologists (those who search for unknown or hidden animals) believe that only a live or dead specimen would convince mainstream scientists that animals such as Bigfoot or Mokèlé-mbèmbé exist — the blurry photos and videos, footprints and eyewitness reports that make up the vast majority of the evidence for these creatures are simply not enough. McCullah and his team will need specialized equipment to capture these animals — and a living dinosaur would require a pretty big net.

“We are in the process of looking at live methods for capture of large animals,” McCullah said. “We will be attempting to bring a tranquilizer rifle, but there are many issues and unknowns we will have to overcome to subdue an animal like Mokèlé-mbèmbé with a tranquilizer gun.”In his Kickstarter pitch, McCullahnoted that there have been several previous expeditions to the Congolese jungles in search of large unknown animals (including Mokèlé-mbèmbé), and yet they all failed to find good evidence. He believes that his group’s youth and enthusiasm will help them succeed where others have failed. The arsenal of cutting-edge technology they plan to bring should help as well: “We will be utilizing satellite images, trail cameras, a Thermal camera to track animals, and sonar to search through the murky waters.”

In the past 20 years, massive deforestation, poaching, mining and road construction affected more than 1.3 million square kilometers, which represents around a third from the forest’s entire surface. According to a recent study by a team of British scientists, if the current ignorance continues, by 2040 another third part of the forest will definitely disappear and this will lead to terrible effects on the local and global climate. Many endangered animals live there but are threatened by deforestation.

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‘Dog-headed pig monster’ terrorizes Africa

Residents in northern Namibia, on the southwest coast of Africa, have reported being terrorized by a bizarre dog-pig hybrid creature.

The animal is said to be mostly white and unlike anything the villagers have ever seen, with a doglike head and the broad, round, nearly hairless back and shoulders of a giant pig. The beast was spotted chasing and attacking dogs, goats and other domestic animals in this arid region not far from the Kalahari desert.

As often happens when rumors of monsters spread in rural areas around the world, some locals have taken extra safety precautions, such as traveling in groups and arming themselves with weapons.

What could this monster be? One Namibian official, regional councilor Andreas Mundjindi, was quoted in Informante newspaper as saying, “This is an alien animal that the people have not seen before. We don’t have a forest here, only bushes. So, this must be black magic at play.” Some people in the area trace the beast to one old man rumored to be a warlock or witch doctor, suggesting it’s his pet (or, what witch-hunters hundreds of years ago would have called a “familiar”).

The assumption that the beast has magical origins is not surprising. A 2010 Gallup poll found belief in magic widespread throughout sub-Saharan Africa, with more than half of respondents saying they personally believe in witchcraft and sorcery.

This is not the first time that unusual animals have been spotted in rural areas of Namibia; several other monsters have been reported over the years, including in July 2009, when unknown creatures reportedly sucked the blood out of livestock, including nearly two dozen goats. Though no one saw the monsters, they were said to have left footprints similar to those of a dog, but much larger. Police followed the footprints, but they mysteriously stopped in an open field, as if the creature suddenly took flight or vanished. At that time, locals were also convinced that the strange beast was the product of black magic — going so far as to accuse an old man and his sister of conjuring the creature.

It’s not clear whether locals believe that the current dog-headed, pig-bodied animal is the same mystery creature that terrorized the region three years ago. Whether the reports are real or rumor, hopefully belief in these creatures won’t be used as an excuse for mob attacks on elderly men and women suspected of witchcraft.

“Everyone believes it is his beast and even he knows that we think so,” a villager told Informante. “When it comes our side in the night, all the dogs are barking, but if it goes back west, then it’s all hush. People must be safe. We don’t want to be mauled by things we don’t know.”

The sightings follow a number of reports out of Africa in recent years involving alleged sightings of strange creatures. In 2009, the Namibian newspaper New Era reported that a number of villagers had filed complaints with police stating that a mysterious tiger-like creature had been sucking blood of their livestock.

Top Photo Credit: The Kalahari Desert in Africa Copyright © Craig Weeks, Gareth Weeks flickr.com/photos/gareth_weeks/3892986971/

Second Photo Credit: Northern Namibia Copyright © Ronamoon blog.travelpod.com/members/ronamoon

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Zimbabwe Mermaids Problem for Water Minister

IOL News has reported that a government minister in Zimbabwe claims that work has stopped on new reservoirs because the employees have been scared off by mermaids.

Samuel Sipepa Nkomo, the Minister of Water Resources, reportedly told a parliamentary committee that terrified workers were refusing to return to the sites, near the towns of Gokwe and Mutare due to an infestation of dangerous (and evidently thirsty) half-human, half-fish aquatic engimas.

Nkomo claimed the only way to solve the problem was to brew traditional beer and carry out rites to appease the spirits, nevertheless the senior politician conceded that even with this frothy gift his emissaries were too frightened to return to the reservoirs. Zimbabwe’s state-approved Herald newspaper quoted Nkomo as stating:

“All the officers I have sent have vowed not to go back there.”

The building of the reservoirs is considered essential if Zimbabwe is to provide adequate water for its population and boost agricultural production.

This may prove to be a problem as these vicious mermaids were also said to be present in other reservoirs around the country where many people combine a Christian faith with traditional beliefs.

In Zimbabwe, the confidence level of the population at the Mermaid myth is varied. Some are skeptical of the existence of the Mermaid and other mythological creatures, but some believe Mermaids really exist in Zimbabwe, although not seen.

Is this folklore running out of control or will a military expedition finally reveal photographic proof or even, perhaps, a curious carcass confirming the existence of these enigmatic creatures that have been a part of human legend since virtually the dawn of time… only time will tell.

Source voanews.com/zimbabwe/news/Zimbabwe-Mermaids-Problem-for-Water-Minister-138664059.html

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