What is the Scariest Cryptid You’d Never Want to Meet?
This Week’s Cryptid Chronicles Poll!
Today’s question is, “What is the Scariest Cryptid You’d Never Want to Meet?”
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To participate, please select an answer from the poll and feel free to leave a brief or detailed comment to this post! If you select “Other”, please explain!
What is the most scariest cryptid creature you would be afraid would “come and get you”??
In addition, after voting, you may also “Ask” in this format, “I would never want to meet xcreature because…”
Thank you all for participating!! Have FUN and stay tuned for more!
Sydney C. Squidney Cryptid Chronicles Blogowner
The Groot slang (Afrikaans for “big snake”) is a legendary cryptid that is reputed to dwell in a deep cave in the Richtersveld, South Africa.
The cave is known as the “Wonder Hole” or the “Bottomless Pit.” Supposedly, it connects to the sea, which is 40 miles away. According to local legend, the cave is filled with diamonds.
Peter Grayson had diamonds on the brain.
For years, the Oxford-educated English businessman had trained himself to find the legendary treasure of the Richtersveld in South Africa.
It was there, legend had it, that a cavern filled with diamonds awaited the bold adventurer. The only problem was, the cavern was supposedly guarded by Grootslang, a fearsome 40-foot-long serpent with enormous gems in its eye sockets.
Similar to a large serpent, the creature is supposedly 12 m (40 ft) long and 1 m (3 ft) wide, according to witnesses. It is claimed to devour elephants by luring them into its cave. In Benin, it is known as an elephant with a serpent’s tail.
![Underwater, face to face with a peaceful anacondaPhoto: © Daniel De Granville, 2010Giant anacondaReports of giant anacondas date back as far as the discovery of South America when sightings of anacondas upwards of 50 meters (150 feet) began to circulate amongst colonists and the topic has been a subject of debate ever since among cryptozoologists and zoologists.Anacondas can grow to sizes of 6 metres (20 ft) and beyond, and 150 kilograms (23 stone or approx, 330 lbs.) in weight. Although some python species can grow longer, the anaconda, particularly the Green Anaconda, is the second heaviest and largest in terms of diameter of all snakes, and it is the second biggest extant snake in the world right behind the Reticulated Python. The lengthiest reputably-measured and confirmed anacondas are about 7.5 meters (25 feet) long. Lengths of 50-60 feet have been reported for this species but such extremes lack verification and too add lack of large prey to support a super-large snake. The two only real reliable claims that can be found describe measured anacondas ranging from 26-32 feet although these remain unverified.HistoryThe first recorded sightings of giant anacondas were from the time of the discovery of South America, when early European explorers entered the dense jungles there and claimed to have seen giant snakes measuring up to 18 metres (59 ft) long. Natives also reported seeing anacondas upwards of 10.5 metres (34 ft)[5] to 18 metres (59 ft). Anacondas above 7 metres (23 ft) in length are rare; the Wildlife Conservation Society has, since the early 20th century, offered a large cash reward (currently worth US$50,000) for live delivery of any snake of 9 metres (30 ft) or more in length, but the prize has never been claimed despite the numerous sightings of giant anacondas. In a survey of 780 wild anacondas in Venezuela, the largest captured was 5 metres (16 ft) long, far short of the length required. A specimen measured in 1944 exceeded this size when a petroleum expedition in Colombia claimed to have measured an anaconda which was 11.4 metres (37 ft) in length, but its claim has never been proven. Scientist Vincent Roth also claimed to have shot and killed a 10.3 metres (34 ft) specimen, but like most other claims it lacks sound evidence. Another claim of an extraordinarily large anaconda was made by adventurer Percy Fawcett. During his 1906 expedition, Fawcett wrote that he had shot an anaconda that measured some 19 metres (62 ft) from nose to tail. Once published, Fawcett’s account was widely ridiculed. Decades later, Belgian cryptozoologist Bernard Heuvelmans came to Fawcett’s defence, arguing that Fawcett’s writing was generally honest and reliable.Historian Mike Dash writes of claims of still larger anacondas, alleged to be as long as 45 metres (148 ft), with some of the sightings supported with photos (although those photos lack scale). Dash notes that if reports of a 18 metres (59 ft) anaconda strains credulity, then a 120 feet (37 m) long specimen is generally regarded as an outright impossibility.In fictionPerhaps the most well-known and defining portrayal of giant anaconda in popular fiction is the 1997 film Anaconda, which featured a giant anaconda hunting and killing several crew members from National Geographic, and its sequel Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid. Another two sequels, Anaconda 3: Offspring and Anacondas: Trail of Blood, were produced as made-for-television movies in 2008.In documentariesIt was featured in an episode of Lost Tapes called “Megaconda”. This term was continually used in the official website. During an expedition in the Peruvian Amazon in 2009, a Belfast father and his son claim to have captured a giant Anaconda on camera. See also Titanoboa GigantophisFrom WikipediaFurther Reading:
Boss Snakes: Stories and Sightings of Giant Snakes in North America
Tales of Giant Snakes: A Historical Natural History of Anacondas and Pythons
Giant Anaconda and Other Cryptids: Fact or Fiction?](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_luxiyyhSnk1r6ti0go1_250.jpg)
![cemeterycreep:
The amazing Hook Island sea monster photos
Category: cryptozoology by Darren Naish
Welcome to sea monster week. Yes, a whole week devoted to the discussion and evaluation of photos purportedly showing marine cryptids, or carcasses of them. Why do this? I’m not entirely sure, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. We begin with a fantastic image that - hopefully - you’ve seen here and there yet may know little about (again, to those who know the cryptozoological literature, I apologise for insulting your intelligence).Judging from comments I’ve seen on the internet, people nowadays assume that this image is a photoshop job unique to the digital age, whereas in fact it’s a classic, much-reproduced image, widely discussed in the cryptozoological literature, and first appearing in print in March 1965 (together with others). It’s Robert Le Serrec’s photo of a huge, tadpole-like creature encountered in Stonehaven Bay, Hook Island, Queensland…
Let’s note to begin with that, if the object depicted here really is a large unknown marine animal, then it perhaps shouldn’t be on a website called Tetrapod Zoology as the most popular proposed identifications of the creature are that it’s some sort of weird giant fish. We’ll come to the subject of identifications in a minute. The story starts in March 1965 when Breton photographer Robert Le Serrec claimed, in Australia’s Everyone magazine, that he had obtained excellent, genuine photos of a real sea serpent: a creature discovered by chance while resting in a lagoon. A very detailed account of the case was written up by Heuvelmans (1968) and what I’ve written here is mostly based on that account. Shuker (1991) and Newton (2005) provided further information.
Wrecked on the Great Barrier Reef with his family and Australian friend Henk de Jong, Le Serrec and family had bought a motor boat and had decided to spend three months on Hook Island (one of the Whitsunday Islands). They were all crossing Stonehaven Bay on December 12th 1964, when Le Serrec’s wife spotted a strange object on the lagoon floor. It proved to be a gigantic tadpole-like creature, estimated at about 30 ft long. They took several still photos, gradually moving closer [the image shown here is a mockup I found on the web]. Eventually Le Serrec and de Jong plucked up the courage to approach it underwater in order to film it. It proved larger than first thought, with its estimated length increasing to 75-80 ft. It didn’t move and they suspected it might be dead, but just as Le Serrec began the filming it opened its mouth and made movements toward them. They returned to the boat, and by this time the creature had moved off.
A large pale wound was visible on the right side of the tail, and it was suggested that this wound (perhaps caused by a ship’s propeller) had caused the animal to take rest and refuge in the shallow bay. The eyes, located on the top of the head and well away from the front of the snout, were pale and possessed slit-shaped pupils. Mostly black in colour, the animal had brown transverse stripes and its skin was smooth in texture. It possessed no fins nor spines of any kind and they didn’t see teeth inside the white mouth.On learning of the case, Heuvelmans (1968) reported that he had done some checking on Le Serrec and found that ‘he had left unpaid creditors in France and did not seem very trustworthy’ (p. 533). Coleman & Huyghe (2003) state that he was wanted by Interpol. Ivan Sanderson had been contacted about the story in February 1965 (Le Serrec had initially approached the American media in order to get the best price for the images) and had concluded that the object might be either a plastic bag used by the US Navy ‘for experiments in towing petrol’, a deflated skyhook balloon which had become covered in weed, or a roll of cloth which had been tied together in places (Heuvelmans 1968). These don’t seem like the most sensible possibilities to me: what about the more obvious idea that (if not a real animal) it was a custom-shaped expanse of plastic sheeting, weighted down with sand?
Sanderson later suggested that the creature might be a giant synbranchid, or swamp eel*. Synbranchids are long-bodied acanthomorph fishes, mostly freshwater or estuarine in habitat, well known for their ability to breathe air and undertake terrestrial excursions [one is shown above, from wikipedia]. However, they’re small (generally less than 60 cm long) and are eel-shaped, not tadpole-shaped, so this doesn’t look like a sensible idea either. Pressed to propose a ‘real animal identity’ for the creature, Heuvelmans noted in a magazine article that it could be ‘some kind of gigantic eel-like selachian’, which would be a huge deal if correct.
* I haven’t seen Sanderson’s article - published in True Magazine - and am going from Shuker (1991).
However, Heuvelmans (1968) actually favoured the idea of plastic sheeting weighed down with sand. He noted that the position of the eyes was highly suspicious given that most vertebrates either have their eyes on the sides of the head, or nearer the snout. Arguments like that don’t really count for much though, as unknown animals are allowed to have their eyes wherever they like, and - anyway - there are vertebrates that do have eyes positioned similarly to those of the Hook Island monster (like mastodonsauroid temnospondyls [the skull of one is shown above].. yeah, maybe it’s a late-surviving, limbless mastodonsauroid).
While the still photo shown at the very top of this article has been reproduced a lot, some other images haven’t been. One (shown here on the left) shows the creature at closer range, and from a different angle. Another (here on the right) shows the head as seen directly from the front, at much closer range. It shows clearly that the white eyes you can see on the top of the head really are meant to be the eyes, but its wavy, broken outline provides further support for the idea that the creature is hoaxed, as the wavy outline shows clearly that the edge of the ‘creature’ is partly overlapped by sand. Ok, you might say that the creature had partially buried itself in the sand, and indeed Le Serrec reported that this was indeed the case. But in at least four spots it looks like someone has placed handfuls of sand on top of the edge of the creature: exactly what you would do if trying to weight down a monster-shaped sheet of plastic.
The final piece of evidence demonstrating that the whole episode was a hoax comes from the fact that, in 1959, Le Serrec had tried to get a group together on an expedition that would prove ‘financially fruitful’, and that he had ‘another thing in reserve which will bring in a lot of money… it’s to do with the sea-serpent’ (Heuvelmans 1968, p. 534). Incidentally, the film supposedly taken of the creature revealed nothing.
One last thing: when most people think of sea serpents, they generally imagine immense, snake-like creatures. Where did Le Serrec get the idea of a giant tadpole monster from? As a kid I always thought that Le Serrec was inspired by ‘yellow belly’, a marine cryptid hypothesised to exist by Heuvelmans (1968) and described as shaped like a tadpole, 60-100 ft long, marked with black transverse bands on its sides, and restricted to the tropical waters of the Indian and Pacific oceans [my own, c. 1988, effort to reconstruct yellow belly shown in adjacent image]. Given that Heuvelmans first published his ideas on ‘yellow belly’ in 1965 (when the French edition of In the Wake of the Sea-Serpents, Le Grand Serpent-de-Mer, appeared), while Le Serrec took the photos in December 1964, this can’t be possible - can it?
I wonder if Heuvelmans had published a description of ‘yellow belly’ prior to 1965, and that this description had been used by Le Serrec in making the hoax. So far as I can tell however, Heuvelmans did no such thing. But could Le Serrec have seen Le Grand Serpent-de-Mer in early 1965, and just lied about the date of the encounter? That would require some detailed investigation (you’d have to show, for example, that Le Grand Serpent-de-Mer was available prior to March 1965, and that Le Serrec had gotten hold of a copy). What about the opposite idea: that Heuvelmans had been inspired by the Hook Island creature when coming up with the idea of ‘yellow belly’? This would assume that Heuvelmans had initially regarded the Hook Island creature as genuine, and there’s no indication of that (it’s not impossible however). Furthermore, he seems to have based ‘yellow belly’ on several other, clearly identified cases (dubious and ambiguous cases (see Magin 1996), but clearly identified nonetheless).
It was recently reported that Le Serrec has been found alive and well and living in Asia, and - as of 2003 - there were apparently plans to interview him about the case. That might be interesting but, regardless, the Hook Island case is undoubtedly a hoax, albeit a pretty good one I think.
Refs - -
Coleman, L. & Huyghe, P. 2003. The Field Guide to Lake Monsters, Sea Serpents, and Other Mystery Denizens of the Deep. Tarcher/Penguin, New York.
Heuvelmans, B 1969. In the Wake of the Sea-Serpents. Hill and Wang, New York.
Magin, U. 1996. St George without a dragon: Bernard Heuvelmans and the sea serpent. In Moore, S. (ed) Fortean Studies Volume 3. John Brown Publishing (London), pp. 223-234.
Newton, M. 2005. Encyclopedia of Cryptozoology. McFarland & Company, Jefferson (N. Carolina) and London.
Shuker, K. P. N. 1991. Extraordinary Animals Worldwide. Robert Hale, London.
Hoax or not (and I still don’t see enough evidence to say factually its fabricated, despite the author’s assumptions) this series of pics creeps me out to this day!](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lufsbcNlPW1qdmc7so1_250.jpg)
![cemeterycreep:
A MONSTROUS SERPENT. DISCOVERED AND KILLED IN JANUARY, 1815, NEAR THE BANKS OF THE OHIO, IN KENTUCKY, BY THREE AMERICAN SOLDIERSA marvelous illustrated broadside containing the account of a massive serpent found and killed at Versailles, Kentucky, near Lexington. The broadside prints the text as an epistolary eyewitness narrative, addressed to the brother of the author in Philadelphia. The author, Samuel Hanson, was a member of an eastern army regiment on its way to join Andrew Jackson’s forces at New Orleans. Stopping in Versailles, Hanson and his fellow soldiers learned that just as the men of the town had themselves departed for New Orleans the previous week, a giant snake had appeared and begun to devour the local livestock and terrorize the women and children. Hanson and two other soldiers agreed to hunt down the beast with guns, tomahawks, and “two lusty dogs,” and discovered it at last on the “summit of a lofty hill”: “[W]e hastened to the spot, when lo! an object greeted our eyes, the horror of which I have it not in my power to describe, picture to your imagination, dear brother, a monster, of the serpent kind, full twenty-two feet in length, and the thickest part of his body of the size of the thigh of one of our largest men! his eyes sparkling like fire, and venomously shooting forth his forked tongue with his whole body drawn in a position to defend himself, or to dart upon any object that should venture within his reach! and you will have a pretty correct idea of this monster!” After a bloody battle involving the loss of one dog, the soldiers slayed the beast and cut off its head. The letter concludes with a detailed description of the corpse (including the contents of its stomach) and the following note: “As this is unquestionably one of the largest Serpents ever known to exist in this country, his skin will be forwarded and presented to your Museum for the satisfaction of the curious.” It may reasonably be concluded that the broadside served as an advertisement for an exhibit at the Peale Museum in Philadelphia. Given the date and Boston imprint, it may also have had some connection to David Bowen, a Philadelphia native, friend of Charles Willson Peale, and museum pioneer of Boston, who quit Boston to return to Philadelphia the same year this broadside was printed. Signed in print by Samuel Hanson. OCLC locates two copies, at the American Antiquarian Society (a tattered copy) and the Massachusetts Historical Society. Not in Shaw & Shoemaker. Rare](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lujiepWvJF1qdmc7so1_250.jpg)
