Writing on the wall: Pictographs, tribal tales add to lore of Sasquatch

Not far from the Tule River in Central California is a rock shelter used by tribal villagers long before the Sierra foothills began filling up with white settlers and gold miners.

The shelter is known as Painted Rock by tourists and archeologists for its colorful array of centuries-old pictographs depicting the animal spectrum from the small (lizard, centipede, caterpillar and frog) and the high-flying (condor, eagle) to the bigger beasts (coyote, beaver, bear and man). And man, of course.

Almost all of the painted images are instantly recognizable as creatures that would have inhabited the Sierras 500 to 1,000 years ago, when the pictographs are believed to have been created.

Three of the animals, though, can only be described in today’s lexicon as an adult male, adult female and child Sasquatch.

The big male, according to Yokuts tribal lore, is Hairy Man, standing on two legs, its arms spread wide, with long hair and, writes Forest Service archeologist Kathy Moskowitz Strain, “large, haunting eyes.” Next to it, with the same hairy, two-legged aspect, are what appear to be the adult female, the “mother,” and her child.

None of the animals shown on Painted Rock are proportionally larger than one would expect; they’re all either life-sized or smaller, as if in the distance.

The painting of Hairy Man is 8 1/2 feet tall.


The “Hairy Man” Pictographs from California. The child is on the left, the female to it’s right, and the male dominates the right side of the panel.

By the time the first white man saw the Painted Rock pictographs in the 1870s, earlier European settlers of the American west were already well aware of Native Americans’ historical belief in the animal the Central California tribes called Hairy Man.

Many Native Americans, from the Cree people in Manitoba to the Cowichans in British Columbia to the tribes of central and northern California, have through the centuries taken a wide berth to avoid encountering a race or tribe of large, two-legged hairy beasts.

The account of a Methodist missionary found that the Salteaux Indians of Lake Winnipeg “living in dread” of what the missionary himself described as “these imaginary monsters.”

Anthropologists’ response to this has been mixed. Some believe the animals were a creation of tribal folklore meant to keep children in line and convince them not to stray too far from the villages.

But early white traders, settlers and miners often talked about the fervent belief held by the locals in what the whites invariably referred to as “mythical” creatures — which were described much the way Sasquatch is now described.

A 1790 publication related a Hudson’s Bay Company trader’s story about the North Saskatchewan River Indians’ belief in a giant, two-legged beast called the wendingo or windingo. The Indians, noted the trapper, “frequently persuade themselves that they see his track in the moss or snow.”

Two decades later a fur trader named David Thompson found a large footprint, described in historical journals as having been 14 inches long and eight inches wide, near what is now Jasper, Alberta. The print is often referred to as the first Sasquatch footprint found by a white man, though Thompson himself was said to have believed it to be the track of a large grizzly bear.

British Columbia periodicals in the late 1800s and early 1900s carried short news items referencing “the wild man of Vancouver Island” being seen by prospectors and others. And the region’s Kwakiutl Indians related tales of the “Woods Giant” which was routinely described the same way — much larger and hairier than humans, walking on two legs, with deep-set eyes under a thick, protruding forehead.

Which, again, is the same description applied to many Sasquatch sightings today.

While modern-day curiosity about Sasquatch was stoked by the 1967 film taken by Yakima County residents Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin, an even more dramatic incident near Mount St. Helens predated that one by nearly a half-century.

In her book, “Myths and Mysteries of Washington,” prolific Northwest historical author Lynn E. Bragg wrote about Cascade and coastal tribal tales of a “band of renegades who looked like giant apes and lived like wild animals in secluded caves high in the Cascade Mountains.”

Tribal belief in the giant beasts — referred to by different tribes and dialects as Seeahtic (or Selahtic), St’iyahama, Stiyaha, Kwi-kwihai and Skoocoom — were related by missionaries as early as 1840. But it wasn’t until July 1924 that the non-tribal world sat up and took notice.

That year, a group of miners prospecting in the Mount St. Helens and Lewis River area reported that their pine-log cabin had withstood a night-long attack by a group of what they described to forest rangers and reporters as “mountain devils” and “hairy apes.”

The miners’ account was that the assault on the cabin came at night, several hours after one of the miners had fired several rifle shots at a seven-foot-tall, hairy animal. According to their story, which was related in numerous newspapers, several of the creatures attacked the cabin, pelting it with large rocks, shrieking loudly, battering at the front door and climbing onto the cabin, the latter prompting the miners to fire several shots through the roof.

The miners left the next day, so anxious to put distance between them and the creatures that one of them, Kelso resident Fred Beck, said they left behind some $200 worth of “supplies, powder and drilling equipment.”

Their revelations made the newspapers, and numerous reporters and curiosity-seekers returned to the site and found numerous large, bare footprints around the cabin — but no “apemen.”

The tale told by Beck and the others is considered evidence of Sasquatch by some while being dismissed by others as a hoax or a bad case of cabin fever.

According to the latter version, the “attackers” were a group of local youths pelting the cabin with pumice stones from the top of the canyon either intentionally or by accident, perhaps not knowing there was a miner’s cabin at the bottom.

Beck, though, later said he and the other miners were able to see the creatures through the gaps in the log walls. “Only three of the creatures (were seen) together at one time,” Beck recalled in a dictated statement to his son four decades later, though “it sounded like there were many more.”

Beck’s description of the shrieking, wall-banging experience bears an eerie resemblance to one that occurred Aug. 14, 2004, at remote Snelgrove Lake in the Canadian province of Ontario.

A group of people were staying at a lakeside cabin, including documentary filmmaker Doug Hajicek, who has produced more than 200 films for such entities as PBS, Animal Planet, Discovery Channel, Outdoor Life Network and ESPN.

For two hours in the early evening, Hajicek said, someone or something threw small rocks toward the group, though not in a threatening way.

“Fifty or sixty rocks, lobbed,” Hajicek said. “You could shine a flashlight in the woods but all you’d see is trees. I didn’t have the courage to stand up and walk into the woods.”

Later that night, Hajicek woke up hungry, went to the cabin kitchen and flicked on a light “that illuminated my head in the window. The back side of the cabin was attacked — screams, banging on the walls, things hitting the cabin and the entire cabin started shaking and rock, and (rocks) started hitting the ceiling and the walls.

“It was like being in a bad B movie.”

Neither Hajicek nor any of the others in the cabin dared go outside until long after the “attack” had abated. But Hajicek returned on the same date the following year with several other people including two research professors, one from Idaho State University and the other from the University of Minnesota. At 3 a.m., Hajicek said, “something huge hit the side of the cabin, so loud the cabin just resonated.”

Shocked and scared, none of the people in the cabin ventured outside.

So, just as the year before, nobody saw whatever it was that was out there.

Source Credit(s): © Scott Sandsberry for Yakima June 19, 2012 bigfootencounters.com/articles/tribal-tales.htm Top Photos: © Kathy Strain/Stanislaus National Forest

Cryptid Chronicles readers, what do YOU think??

Discuss this post at facebook.com/CryptidChronicles >

If you enjoyed this post please comment, Like ♥ and share!
Also follow on http://twitter.com/cryptidfans

Discover more cryptids and mysterious creatures at Cryptid Chronicles and please vote in our Cryptid Art Tournament!

Thank you!

Your Chronicler,
Sydney C. Squidney
cryptidchronicles.tumblr.com

Cynocephali, the Dog Headed Men

Men with the heads of dogs have been reported since ancient times. Cynocephali were supposed to be a race living in Africa, who cannibalized humans. Seeing such beings in modern times would seem incredible, yet bizarrely, there have been increasing modern reports of these creatures.

The Cynocephali have existed in the mythology of Europe, India and China. The legends of all three of these cultures originally said that the Cynocephali resided somewhere in the wild lands west of Tibet and north of Persia (modern-day Iran). The European legends later began placing Cynocephali in all unexplored regions. In Europe, they were described as dog-headed people, sometimes as dog-headed hairy giants that have something in common with hairy humanoids. In the legends from India and China, the Cynocephali were described as shapeshifters who could change from human to dog, but who always retained some animal features when they became human again.

It should be noted that in these references these are not werewolves, but animals or gods with the heads of dogs on fully human bodies.

Probably the earliest example is the Egyptian god Anubis. This god is depicted with the body of a man but with the head of a jackal. Anubis was a god of death and the underworld, and paintings of Anubis can be found throughout Egypt’s ancient sites.

Worth mentioning is that Cynocephalus is a Greek word for a sacred Egyptian baboon with the face of a dog. The name Kynokephalos means dog-headed, from “kuôn,” a dog, and “kephalos,” head.

While the Greeks may not have had dog-headed gods, they knew of places where dog-headed creatures purportedly existed. As far back as the fifth century BCE, a Greek doctor wrote about dog-headed men that could be found in India. Later, a Greek explorer described dog-headed men (kynokephaloi), also in India, who spoke to each other by barking and were primitive savages by nature.  They were also referred to as the creatures that lived in “India beyond the Ganges” (which we now call Southeast Asia).

Herodotus, Histories 4. 191. 3 (trans. Godley) (Greek historian C5th B.C.) :
“For the eastern region of Libya, which the Nomads inhabit, is low-lying and sandy as far as the Triton river; but the land west of this, where the farmers live, is exceedingly mountainous and wooded and full of wild beasts. In that country are the huge snakes and the lions, and the elephants and bears and asps, the horned asses, the Kunokephaloi (Cynocephali) (Dog-Headed) and the Headless Men that have their eyes in their chests, as the Libyans say, and the wild men and women, besides many other creatures not fabulous.”

In the medieval mappaemundi, lurking at the edges of the world were monstrous races. The text contains the description of some of these species and most importantly included reference to the Cynocephali (Cynocephales, “Dog-heads”), one of the best-known monstrous races at the time. According to Pliny, they lived in caves, wore animal skins, hunted very succesfully, and used javelins, bows, and swords. Other sources that circulated in the middle ages picture the Cynocephali much more frighteningly, with enormous teeth and breathing fire. Several sources make them cannibals. All sources emphasize that they combine the natures of man and beast.  The Pygmei seem to even include  creatures with long hanging ears that droop to the ground, who evoke the earlier *Panotii*. [An inventory of these and other monstrous creatures from the *Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493*.]



Centuries later, even the elders of the Catholic Church believed such beings existed. Saint Augustine pondered in his writings if dog-headed men were held to the same moral laws as humankind and if they could be saved.



But Augustine was not Christianity’s only delving into the subject. Very bizarrely, some ancient icons of Saint Christopher depict him as having a dog’s head. The story goes that he led a sinful life in this form, but when he reformed and was baptized he was transformed into a man having a human head.



Even King Arthur gets into the picture when he and his army allegedly defeated a band of dog-headed soldiers in the mountains surrounding Edinburgh.

And although he never claimed to encounter them personally, Marco Polo reported that dog-headed men lived on an island off the coast of Myanmar.



If real Cynocephali exist, it is difficult to determine just what sort of animal they might be. Some of these legends might be garbled accounts of baboons, monkeys with dog-like snouts. Today, this explanation has been mostly dropped. Further studies have suggested that the Cynocephali tales are actually based on dog ancestor origin myths from tribes who were considered filthy barbarians by more “civilized” writers in India and China. According to these writers, whole races of people were deliberately killed because they weren’t human, they were “really” monsters. When these myths were imported to Europe, they became even further changed from the originals. The European Cynocephali is often quite different than the creature of the original legends.

But - the tales are not all ancient. Current sightings of what are claimed to be humans with dog heads have happened in Michigan, Wisconsin, and even the Shetland Islands.

Researcher and author Linda Godfrey has been reporting on sightings of an unknown upright-walking canine known as the ‘Manwolf’ or ‘Dogman’ for many years. Witnesses describe these creatures as 5 to 7 feet tall, extremely muscular, covered in fur, with large fangs, the head of a wolf or German Shepherd.

The tales of dog-headed creatures, including the Dogman of Michigan, and the wolf-like Beast of Bray Road of Wisconsin are accounted in several of Godfrey’s dogmen books and  with the numerous amounts of reasonable eyewitness reports, the dogheads are very much alive in modern culture.

Obviously there have been no skeletons of dog-headed humans ever found to back up these tales and most scientists ignore the modern sightings but for the few who do pay attention to them, the Cynocephali could be viewed as either some kind of hairy humanoid or as a cryptid canine of some sort. One thing is for certain - the widespread myths do make one wonder where all these stories came from and if these tales are just remnants of an earlier long-lost global myth that later developed their own flavors within different cultures or if there really are dog-headed men that have been living with us ever since ancient times.

Sources: gods-and-monsters.com/cynocephalus.html, cryptidz.wikia.com/wiki/Cynocephali, historicmysteries.com/dog-headed-men, columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00generallinks/munster/india/aa_india.html, newanimal.org/cyno.htm

Cryptid Chronicles readers, what do YOU think??

To discover more cryptids and mysterious creatures please follow us at cryptidchronicles.tumblr.com

New Yeren Expedition Begins

Researchers will start exploring large areas of primitive forest this month in the Shennongjia region of central China’s Hubei province.

A group of 38 experts from several universities and research institutions will begin the expedition across the Shennongjia reserve on July 8, 2012, according to a statement from the Shennongjia Nature Reserve’s management bureau.

The trip is scheduled to last through August, according to the Chinese news service, Xinhua.

The group will focus on studying the region’s animals, plants and land features and will publish its research results later. Animals in the area include leopards, the Asian golden cat, the golden pheasant, South China tiger, and the Chinese giant salamander. The region is also home to the rare golden snub-nosed monkey, which is on the verge of extinction and was first spotted in Shennongjia in the 1960s. Additionally, there will be an effort to discover more about the Yeren.

Located deep in the remote mountains of Hubei, the Shennongjia Nature Reserve has long been rumored to be the home of an elusive creature known in China as the Yeren, or “Wild Man” in English. Some in the media, worldwide, use the term “Bigfoot” (after the North American unknown hairy hominoids) to discuss Yeren.

If the researchers manage to uncover concrete evidence of the Wild Man, they will have succeeded where two previous major expeditions – one from 1974 to 1981 and one in 2010 – failed.

“I simply want to put an end to the argument that it exists,” said Wang Shancai, of the Hubei Relics and Archaeology Institute, when he set out in 2010.

More than 400 people have claimed to have seen the Yeren in the Shennongjia area over the past century, but no hard evidence has been found to prove the creature’s existence.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) added Shennongjia to its World Network of Biosphere Reserves in 1990.

Part of Chinese folklore, the Yeren or Yeren-like creatures are cited in Chinese literature that dates back more than 2,000 years having said to reside in mountainous regions of southern and central China.  Despite numerous sightings and even some tangible evidence collected, there hasn’t been sufficient data for scientists to conclusively confirm the identity of the mysterious Yeren.



Witnesses typically report the creatures to be covered in reddish colored hair. Some white specimens have also been sighted. Their height is estimated to range from six to eight feet, although some colossal examples allegedly in excess of ten feet tall have been reported. Overall, it is smaller than the American Bigfoot. Like Bigfoot, the yeren is peaceful and will generally quietly walk away when encountering people in the Zhejiang province.

In 2005, Zhang Jiahong, a shepherd in Muyu, near the forest, told state media he had seen two of the creatures, with “hairy faces, eyes like black holes, prominent noses and dishevelled hair, with faces that resembled both a man’s and a monkey’s.”

The Yeren shown appears in Field Guide To Bigfoot, Yeti, & Other Mystery Primates Worldwide By Loren Coleman, Patrick Huyghe and was drawn by Harry Trumbore.

Another explorer, Zhang Jinxing, spent years living as a hermit in the Shennongjia forest, and said he had seen footprints on 19 separate occasions, without ever finding the beast.

Some cryptozoologists have drawn a link between the Yeren and the extinct hominid Gigantopithecus, which formerly inhabited the general region. It has also been suggested that the Yeren is actually a new species of orangutan, one that is ground-dwelling, bipedal and native to mainland Asia instead of Borneo or Sumatra.

It is also thought that the Yeren might just be a legend. The Yeren apparently dwells in a region already rich with superstition and strange phenomena, including an inordinate occurrence of albinism in the local fauna, adding to its mystique. It has been connected with ancient Chinese legends of magical forest ogres and man-like bears.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeren, weeklyworldnews.com/headlines/49723/in-search-of-the-wild-man, cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/yeren2012

Cryptid Chronicles readers, what do YOU think?? 

★★★ Cryptid Fans — Don’t miss our 200th post giveaway! ★★★

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

Cryptid Chronicles readers, what do YOU think?? 

★★★ Cryptid Fans — Don’t miss our 200th post giveaway! ★★★

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

Abominable Maps

Russian Hominologists such as Igor Burtsev have said that Wildmen types were universally distributed in the world at the advent of modern humans, that we began taking over their territories from the first and pushing them into less desirable areas for habitation, and that this process has been going on throughout history.

Map I (Top - Wildmen Map) intends to show that: the dotted line encompassing East Asia, Southeast Asia and Australia is meant to convey the idea that they once inhabited most of the area but now they only inhabit more irregular areas of refuge within the larger territory. It would be very tedious to indicate all of the smaller territories precisely, so leaving it vague might be the better representation. They are apparently mostly nomadic anyway, and in North America at least they seem to move along major waterways preferentially.
There is no easy way to catalogue how many native names such beings have accumulated over time. A quick count of the listings from George Eberhart’s Mysterious Creatures indicates there are easily 200 or more entries on them, including their giant and pygmy forms. That of course does not mean to imply there are 200 or more types of creatures running around: far from it, there seems to be only one species represented and that one species is most likely our own species, especially if the bulk of them are Neanderthaloid or Heidelburgers and either one of those categories are counted as subspecies of Homo sapiens.

The burden of proof is now on the ones who want to say that such forms of fossil men are really “Not human” and show that to the general satisfaction of everybody else, in terms that are acceptable to all experts. (Such things as proving their brains are too small to count as human or they have no thumbs would be acceptable criteria: saying they are “Too hairy” is NOT an acceptable argument.)

Map II (Middle - Sasquatches and Australopithecines Map) concerns Sasquatch and possible Gigantopithecus types, plus other “Half-Human-Half Ape” types as the Australopithecines. These would technically not all be “Missing Links” but more practically described as kinds of apes that walk normally on their hind legs. The Sasquatch types are either one species that is TransBeringia in its distribution or else two closely related species in East Asia and in Western North America. Further work would need to be done to determine that.

Map III (Middle - Unknown Apes Map) concerns both known and unknown species of apes also both in Eastern Asia and America in two tight bundles of variation: one set of Orangutan-like apes with reddish hair and another type of (large) Lesser apes like siamangs with dark or black hair. The Orangutanlike apes are further divided into residually-primitive terrestial apes that walk flat-footed on the ground and often bipedally, and then the more tropical, more arboreal apes that walk on the sides of their feet when they are on the ground.

Evidently the tropical New World variety of these apes developed into a mostly tree-dwelling ape with a number of unique specializations related to its lifestyle, quite independantly from the Old World orangutans that did the same. At the same time, there are other grounds for suspecting that the standard Indonesian orangutans may have had examples relocated into New Guinea and Northern Australia. The siamang types are also much the same in the New World but they seem to include much larger variants that appear to be moving into the chimpanzee econiche. Siamangs are habitually bipeds on the ground anyway. It is unknown how many species remain to be named and discovered out of this series, but it would seem there are at least four uncatalogued species involved, and names are claimed on at least two of them. In this case the scientific genus name for Yetis shall probably end up being the same as the “Mainland Pongo”, only we don’t really even had a good valid scientific name for that one, either.





Here is a photo of famous “Throwback” Julia Pastrana (Also suggested to be a halfbreed Bigfoot herself: and also somebody that ended up going on an exhibit in a traveling sideshow after death), and then a recap of the “Three types of Yeti” rearranged to correspond to the order of the three maps above.



In my opinion, we are compelled to consider that the “Wildmen” should be of our own species when we have such a situation as we have Julia as a member of our species and she looks exactly like they do. Therefore I would NOT consider Wildmen an unknown species, I would count them as a section of our own species. On the other hand, the Sasquatches are pretty definitely a new species (or two) and the orangutan-like apes are several new species all obviously related to each other but with a range of adaptations that make it necessary for two genera to be involved, and these two genera are different to and additional to the “Known” orangutans. Grover Krantz suggested that Sasquatch is Gigantopithecus and I am willing to go with his suggestion provisionally.

Furthermore he suggested Sasquatch is either the known fossil species  Gigantopithecus blacki or it is a new New World species Gigantopithecus canadiensis . My assessment would be there are two species and the Asiatic one wold be Gigantopithecus blacki  while the New World species would be Gigantopithecus canadiensis . that is a provisional judgement but based on the observation that similar species in both Asia and North America tend to have different species each native to the different continents. And Ameranthropoides is already named and probably sufficiently well enough documented to be granted provisional acceptance. So we have the (probably) two Gigantopithecus  species, one presumably a continuance of the known fossil species and the other a New World derivation of that species, if it is indeed separate.

And then we have two forms of ground dwelling “Fossil Pongo”, one of which is the Yeti and a distant cousin of which is the Skunk Ape, as well as the Neotropical “Pongo-parallel” in the form of the Sisimite and/or Mapinguari, for a total of five “Nearly-known” unidentified species. Please note that these species are relatable to known fossil forerunners and are hence presumably Lazarus taxa, except for the New World siamangs and Pongo-parallel, which are closely similar to the “known” species but cannot be counted as the same species owing to special circumstances. They are thus all of them on the more easily allowable edge for Cryptids as far as their credentials can be checked. It is also true that the “Fossil Pongo” and Gigantopithecus  types share a common ancestor in the Sivapithecines and are both branches of the Pongids, as opposed to the African Apes branch.



Two views of Sivapithecus

Article by Dale Drinnon 22 February 2012 © FRONTIERS OF ZOOLOGY

*** CRYPTID FANS, DISCOVER MORE CRYPTIDS AND MYSTERIOUS CREATURES AT CRYPTID CHRONICLES AND LET US KNOW what Cryptid you most believe in/find plausible?? ***

@@@ ARTISTS » Don’t miss the Cryptid Chronicles 1st Annual Fan Art Competition! @@@

The Wild Man of Ocheesee Pond

A 19th Century Bigfoot Capture

Jackson County is blessed with an abundance of alleged sightings of the monster that some call Bigfoot…Reports of these creatures have come from virtually all parts of the county. In the swamps and remote woods around Parramore and Two Egg in eastern Jackson County, for example, many stories are told of the Two Egg “Stump Jumper,” a sort of mini-bigfoot that is often seen in the headlights of cars at night or lurking in the darkness around rural homes. Similar sightings have been reported in the swamps along the Chipola River, particularly in the Forks of the Creek area between Malone and Campbellton. Other reports have come from the swamps along the Apalachicola River and the vast cypress forests of Ocheesee Pond.

It was in this last locality in 1884 that a party of searchers pulled off one of the few documented captures of a Bigfoot-like creature that in the parlance of those days was called the “Wild Man of the Woods.”

Sightings of the Wild Man were nothing new in the 19th century South. Indians told early settlers of a strange man-like creature that roamed remote swamps and woods. Covered with hair and much taller than normal humans, the monster was considered dangerous and most who encountered him would not approach him.

Located below Grand Ridge and Sneads in the southeast corner of Jackson County, Ocheesee Pond was a focal point for early settlers. More than three miles long and nearly that distance wide, the clear water pond fills a vast shallow basin. While there are some sections of open water, primarily along its southernmost reaches, most of Ocheesee Pond is covered with a dense growth of cypress and other swamp trees. It is a strikingly beautiful place, but the swamp can easily feel a bit foreboding as well.

The Wild Man traditionally favored such dense and swampy locations, but in 1883 local residents nevertheless were surprised when their neighbors began reporting encounters and sightings of one of the creatures. He seemed to live on berries and other edibles that grew wild in and around the pond and was often seen swimming or wading as he moved from island to island. He tried his best to stay away from humans, but his cries often shattered the nighttime stillness of the farms and homes nestled along the shores of the pond.

As the number of sightings increased, so too did concerns about the safety of local families. Residents of the pond area gathered and discussed the situation and finally decided that an effort should be launched to capture or drive off the monster. Men assembled with guns, boats and horses and a plan was devised by which they would converge on the creature’s last reported location from various directions at once.

Many of these men had served only twenty years before in the Confederate Army. They knew the pond well and had seen far scarier things in their lifetimes than a man covered in hair…It did not take them long to find their prey and on August 18, 1884, startling news went out from Columbus, Georgia:

News brought by the steamer Amos Hays from Lower River is to the effect that the wild man captured in Ocheecee Swamp, near Chattahoochee, and carried to Tallahassee, did not belong to a Florida asylum, and that all inquiry proved unavailing to identify him. He had been swimming in Ocheecee Lake, from island to island, and when taken was entirely destitute of clothing, emaciated, and covered with a phenomenal growth of hair. He could give no account of himself, and the theory is that he escaped from an asylum of some other state, and spent his time in the woods, living on berries, &c.

Other reports followed, but the details were consistent. The captured Wild Man acted insane, was covered with a thick growth of hair and had lived deep in the swamps.

The newspapers of the time, however, were silent on the eventual fate of the Ocheesee Pond Wild Man. Despite the fact that his body was covered in thick hair, he was human enough in appearance that his captors believed that he probably had escaped from an asylum. No asylum reported such an odd escapee, however, and his captors became even more baffled by the Wild Man.

The last account of him mentions that he was being sent to Tallahassee, but from there he disappears entirely from the record.

Ocheesee Pond is located a few miles south of the towns of Sneads and Grand Ridge in Jackson County, Florida (about 50 minutes west of Tallahassee). To reach the public boat ramp take Arkansas Road north off C.R. 280 (Shady Grove Road). The landing is about 4/10s of a mile straight ahead.

Cryptid Chronicles Followers, What do YOU think about the The Wild Man of Ocheesee Pond? Are any followers from this area?

Do you ♥ Cryptozoology? Enter our Tumblr Giveaway Contest!

Devil Monkey Attacks in North America

These vicious, marsupial-like primates have reportedly attacked humans across North America since 1934.

Devil Monkeys are a unique breed of NAPE (North American Ape) that have been described as being about 3 to 4-feet tall, although some eyewitnesses have sworn that these furry fiends can reach a height that is in excess of 7-feet. It seems clear, however, that those who have had an encounter with this larger version of the beast are actually describing a run-in with a prototypical HAIRY HOMINID and not the smaller, more primate-like Devil Monkey.

Unlike the legendarily gorilla-like Bigfoot or Yeti, these creatures — which have been seen throughout the American South and Mid-West and as far North as Alaska — have been described as a shaggy, canine-faced baboon-like creatures with powerful, almost kangaroo-like legs, a trait they share with the South America’s notorious “goat sucker” the Chupacabra.

Other distinguishing traits that Devil Monkeys are said to bear include 3-toed, razor-clawed feet, tiny pointed ears and a long, often bushy, tail.

The first reported  encounter with this swift, dangerous predator occurred in 1934, in South Pittsburgh, Tennessee. According to the reports — which were allegedly published in national newspapers — eyewitnesses described a mysterious beast that could “leap across fields” with “lightening speed.”

This ability to jump great distances — up to 20-feet according to some accounts — have led some to speculate that these animals may have something in common with the  MYSTERY KANGAROOS that have been seen throughout the United States for decades. The suggestion is that those who think they’re seeing kangaroos from a distance are, in fact, spying Devil Monkeys.

While these 1934 encounters may or may not be associated with this phenomenon, the first “official” Devil Monkey sighting occurred in 1959, while a couple by the name of Boyd were driving through the mountains near their home in Saltville, Virginia.

According to their account, an ape-like beast attacked their car, leaving three  scratch marks on the vehicle. The Boyd’s daughter, Pauline, described the terrifying attacker:

“(It had) light, taffy colored hair, with a white blaze down its neck and underbelly… it stood on two, large well-muscled back legs and had shorter front legs or arms.”

Boyd went on to describe a second Devil Monkey encounter that occurred just days later in the same region: “Several days after this incident, two nurses from the Saltville area were driving home from work one morning and were attacked by an unknown creature who ripped the convertible top from their car.” Luckily the nurses — though surely frightened out of their wits — were unharmed.

In 1969, esteemed mystery ape researchers RENE DAHINDEN and JOHN GREEN looked into accounts of a long-tailed “monkey” beast that eyewitnesses claimed was lurking near Mamquam, British Columbia. This creature was said to have left a series of distinctive, three toed tracks — much like those attributed to Devil Monkeys as well as the legendary Honey Island Swamp Monster — in its wake.

In 1973, famed cryptozoologist and author Loren Coleman investigated reports of three, black bushy-tailed “giant monkeys” that were said to have slaughtered livestock in Albany, Kentucky. Coleman mentioned the event in an interview with Animal Planet:

“I investigated that case in depth. I interviewed the people, who were very sincere. In the whole context of devil monkey reports, it seemed extremely sincere. You have these reports of hairy, monkey-like creatures with tails, very different from Bigfoot.”

In 1979, there was a spate of reported encounters with a bipedal, monkey-like critter known as the BELT ROAD BOOGER, which hailed from the rural depths of Georgia. One female eyewitness described it as: “The ugliest looking thing I’ve ever seen… (it had a tail) like a beaver’s, but it’s bushy.” She also claimed in bore “a face like a dog.” These traits are all known to be Devil Monkey characteristics.

In fact, more than a few eyewitnesses have describe these beasts as resembling a wild dog at a distance, which suggests that this creature may employ both bipedal and quadrupedal locomotion. This depiction of the creature coincides with what some consider to be the most recent — and controversial — Devil Monkey encounter on the books to date.

According to the report, On January 12, 2006, an anonymous witness claimed that he and his family entered their Chicago home to discover what he asserted was a  “devil-like creature violently attacking my 6 year-old labrador dog.”

The man further described the beast as being “an unsual combination of a monkey, wolf, and devil” with “long fangs, a monkey-like tail and extremely bright glowing eyes.” It should be noted that while “unnaturally” glowing eyes have been associated with the Murphysboro Mud Monster and Ohio’s Orange Eyes, it is not something generally associated with the Devil Monkey phenomenon.

Surprisingly, this fellow — unlike so many others who are taken aback by their first encounter with an ostensibly violent cryptid — claimed that he remained calm enough to grab a nearby camera and snap a photo of the allegedly diabolical fiend. It was after the flashbulb’s burst that this creature purportedly “sprang to its hind legs and ran,” nearly pushing over this lucky fellow and his family in an effort to escape through the open door behind them.

This unnamed observer also claimed that his neighborhood had been hereafter plagued with numerous reports of missing pets and even went so far as to state that there was an additional — as yet wholly unsubstantiated — account of yet another individual seeing an identical beast  hanging from a local tree by its tail.

While the aforementioned case may reek of a hoax, some investigators feel that there is an intriguing link between these vicious, new world primates and the still controversial DERIDDER ROADKILL photos — which appeared on the internet in 1996 — and seem to depict the CURIOUS CARCASS of an unidentified, baboon-like animal with canine features on a Louisiana road side.

It’s worth mentioning that in 1996, Louisiana was also the site for another strange eyewitness report that seems very much like a Devil Monkey. The report was posted online by an biologist — who works as a consultant for a biotechnology firm and, understandably, withheld his name  – in July of 2009. From his own account:

“As I sat there alone, gazing out at the rain, I noticed some movement to my left in a large field next to the property. This field is separated from the property by an old fence with scattered pine trees next to it… I turned to look and saw something, I honestly don’t know what, running extremely fast on all fours from the field towards our property.”

“At first I guess I kinda thought it may be a dog, but as it got closer I realized I was wrong. The thing, whatever it was, ran on all fours to a spot in the fence were the trees were about thirty feet apart, and lept over the five-foot fence in one hop.”

“Once on my side of the fence, this thing stood up on two legs! It was only thirty feet from me at that point, and I got a really good look at it. It was about four feet tall, maybe a little bigger. It had really big, yellowish eyes, large pointed ears, and a sparse coat of shaggy fur. It stood on its tiptoes, and had a long, somewhat bushy tail, kinda like a squirrel, but not nearly as thickly furred.”



“The snout was very cat-like…  I was close enough to make out thick hairs on the face. I’m inclined to believe that these may have been whiskers. Once it stood, it kept its arms to its sides, much like a human, but slightly bent at the elbows. Its hands had identifiable fingers with noticeable claws.”

With its bushy tail, pointed ears, “noticeable” claws and penchant for leaping it is difficult not to associate this  eyewitness report — as well as his extraordinary illustrations — with those of classic Devil Monkey sightings.

“I know I saw something that day that I could not explain, and I am hard pressed to ask others to blindly accept what I say at face value. I am not trying to convince anyone, but rather find answers for myself… in any case, after considering the evidence, I firmly believe that what I saw was indeed a so-called devil monkey.”

While most are convinced that this is a heretofore UNCLASSIFIED species of primate — or perhaps even a remnant species of an ancient family of simians known as Tarsiids — there are some who believe that Devil Monkeys belong less to the world of cryptozoology and more to the shadowy realm that exists BEYOND MYTHOLOGY.

These researchers tell of a creature that comes to us from the legends of a Native American people who originally hailed from the Southeastern United States known as the Choctaws.

The Choctaws told tales  of the NALUSA FALAY, which they claimed were thin, black, humanoid beings — much like SHADOW PEOPLE — with beady eyes and long pointy ears. It was believed that Nalusa Falaya stalked their victims by sliding on their stomachs like a snake, which is, admittedly, a far cry from the bounding approach often accredited to Devil Monkeys.

There are some investigators who have even speculated that these animals might hail from OUT OF THIS WORLD or may even be related to the FORMERLY EXTINCT primate Theropithecus oswaldi — an ancient, giant relative of the modern day gelada — which has been associated with the notorious African predator known as the NANDI BEAR.

© Copyright American Monsters Rob Morphy 2002—2011

Cryptid Chronicles Followers, What do YOU think?

To discover more cryptids and mysterious creatures, please follow us at cryptidchronicles.tumblr.com or on twitter @cryptidfans!

Don’t miss out on our 200th post giveaway!