@cryptidfans
Lusca: Tentacled Sea Monster from the Caribbean - was it Octopus giganteus?
The Bahamian island, Andros, has an array of what the natives call blue holes, formed during the prehistoric Ice Ages. Researchers discovered that they are an immense network of underwater caves, linking Andros’ lakes with the Atlantic Ocean. Divers of these blue holes have described their experiences in many ways ranging from beautiful and fascinating to eerie and haunting. The eerie feeling you get while diving the blue holes might be from the presence of Lusca, the mythical beast of Bahamian legend. Lusca is half-shark, half-octopus. She lurks deep among the waters of the blue holes and inland caverns that are found throughout the Bahama island chain.
Local legend holds that the tidal currents of the inland blue holes are none other than the breath of Lusca. As she breathes in, water pours in strongly enough in some caverns to form a whirlpool, and when she exhales, cold, clear water boils to the surface.
It has been suggested by cryptozoologists that the lusca is actually a gigantic octopus, far larger than the known giant octopuses of the genus Enteroctopus which includes the giant Pacific octopus which can be found in the coastal North Pacific, usually at a depth of around 65 m (215 ft) and has a recorded arm span of up to 4.3 m (14 ft).
One of the first fairly well-documented sightings of an unknown giant octopus occurred around on the evening of November 30 of 1896. Two bicycling boys discovered an enormous light pink mass that had washed up on the beach at St. Augustine, Florida.
When the young men first saw the carcass, it had sunk into the sand because of its immense weight. The next day, Dr. DeWitt Webb, founder of the St. Augustine Historical Society and Institute of Science, arrived on the scene. The skin was of an extremely light pink color with a silvery tint to it. They concluded it weighed roughly five tons and the visible portions were twenty-three feet in length, four feet high, and eighteen feet across the widest part of the back. Webb decided that it was not a whale but instead some kind of octopus.
Over the course of the next few days, Webb and the rest of the party returned and photographed the creature. Also, two drawings based on the snapshots were made by A. Hyatt Verrill, son of Dr. Verrill. 
Published in the Pennsylvania Grit, 1897.
For decades, the photographs taken were lost and these drawings were all that existed pictorially of the event. Then, in 1993, some of Dr. Webb’s original photos were discovered / recognized! The photographer Dr. Webb had used, Mr. Van Lockwood, had compiled an album of photos he had taken from 1885 to 1899. Upon Lockwood’s death, he had bequeathed the album containing the photos to the St. Augustine Historical Society and Institute of Science. Somehow decades later this album was discovered / recognized while in the possession of Mrs. Marjorie Blakoner, of California. Here they are:
Panoramic view of the crowd of some 50 persons, who had come by foot, bicycle, horse, or car, to see the “Florida monster”.
Two horses and a harness, on the left side; to the center is the carcass, a domed mass, with a cable around it’s middle and a post on it’s left. On the right are 3 other men, of which the first one is Dr. Webb.
One assistant reportedly found fragments of arms while digging in the sand nearby. He was unfortunately alone at the time so his statement is uncorroborated. Evidently, it was attacked while still in the sea and had been dismembered before the carcass washed to shore. Soon afterwards, a storm dragged it out to sea where it again washed ashore two miles to the south of its original position.
It was then that Webb sent several letters describing the carcass to scientists. Professor Verrill of Yale read one of them. Verrill, a zoologist, was recognized for his work on cephalopods, especially giant squid. In a note in the American Journal of Science, published January 1897, he concluded the animal was a giant squid, not an octopus, but much larger that the Newfoundland specimens he had examined. Webb then forwarded more photographs and information to Verrill, who changed his theory to an octopus. He wrote more notes to the American Journal of Science describing the new giant octopus. He concluded the specimen’s tentacles to be approximately seventy-five to one hundred feet long by eighteen inches at the base. He then designated the new creature Octopus giganteous verrill, after himself.
It would be into the second week of January that the work on the specimen would continue. The carcass had been washed out to see again resulting in further losses of body parts and mutilation of the carcass. He reported to both Verrill and Professor William Healy Dall, curator of mollusks at the National Museum in Washington DC, now called the Smithsonian, by letter. In spite of this, neither Verrill nor Dall made any effort to investigate the carcass for themselves nor were they willing to provide the time and money to properly preserve the animal.
Using teams of horses and the efforts of local citizens and companies, Webb was able to move the carcass further up the beach. This protected the remains from being permanently washed out to sea where they would have been lost forever. He then prepared specimens for Verrill and Dall. They were both taken from the mantle of the creature and preserved in formaldehyde. This would turn out to be the only hard evidence to future scientists to study. Webb was, however, interested in preserving the whole carcass and preservatives were forwarded.
Verrill received Webb’s preserved specimen on February 23 and wrote letters of reaction that were published in Science on March 5, 1897, and in the Herald on the seventh. He described the samples visually and concluded they could not be octopus tissue because they resembled the blubber found in some crustaceans, despite the fact that little oil was found in them. Professor Frederic Augustus Lucas, of the National Museum, also examined the specimens and stated “the substance looks like blubber, and smells like blubber, and it is blubber, nothing more nor less.”
Verrill finally concluded, after further examination of the tissues, that the bag-like section of the carcass was most likely the upper head and nose of a sperm whale. In the issues of the American Journal of Science and the American Naturalist for April, he does not try to make the objections and problems with his sperm whale theory less obvious. He pointed out that other zoologists that examined the carcass still believe it is an unknown cephalopod related to the octopus.
No work was done on the specimen until 1957 when Dr. Forrest Glenn Wood became interested and involved Dr. Joseph F. Gennaro Jr. Dr. Wood was a specialist in biology for the Naval Undersea Research and Development Laboratory of San Diego (California), and was reviewing the archives of the Marineland Research Laboratory (Florida) in support of its research on octopi.
This lead to a long research effort uncovering all of the published accounts of the event, many of which made mention of specimens being sent to the Smithsonian. Wood was unsuccessful in getting the Smithsonian to cooperate, so the more influential Gennaro made a trip to the Smithsonian to collect the specimen and wrote:
There by the sink was a glass container about the size of a milk can. Inside it was a murky mixture of cheesecloth, formalin (and I think some alcohol), and half a dozen large white masses of tough fibrous material, each about as large as a good sized roast. We lifted them up with the cheesecloth, then took them out with forceps.
He noted that the material corresponded to Webb’s description. He was allowed to remove what he wanted with a dissecting knife with replaceable blades. The two pieces he removed were wrapped in cheesecloth, placed in a jar, and transported by himself to his laboratory.
Initial examination proved disappointing. There were no features such as suckers, identifiable skin structures, or muscular masses. He then viewed them through a microscope along with control specimen samples of known octopus and squid. He was disappointed to find no cellular fine structure. He expected highly differentiated cells of a mammal if it was from a whale or structures typical of a squid or octopus. Then he viewed his control samples. They also revealed little if any cellular structure. Differences of connective tissues were more striking. Octopus tissue was different from squid tissue and neither could be mistaken for mammalian tissue.
Using polarized light, Gennaro decide to compare connective tissues. His findings were as follows:
Now differences between the contemporary squid and octopus samples became very clear. In the octopus, broad bands of fibers passed along the plane of tissue and were separated by equally broad bands arranged in a perpendicular direction. In the squid there were narrower, but also relatively broad, bundles arranged in planes of the section, separated by thin partitions of perpendicular fibers….
It seemed I had found the means to identify the mystery sample after all. I could distinguish between octopus and squid, and between them and mammals, which display a lacy network of connective tissue fibers….
After seventy-five years, the moment of truth was at hand. Viewing section after section of the St. Augustine sample, we decided at once and beyond any doubt, that the sample was not whale blubber. Further, the connective tissue pattern was that of broad bands in the plane of the section with equally broad bands arranged perpendicularly, a structure similar to, if not identical with, that in my octopus sample….
The evidence appears unmistakable that the St. Augustine sea monster was in fact an octopus, but the implications are fantastic.
To Be Continued on Cryptid Chronicles!
Please check back for the conclusion to this post!
Source Credit(s): suite101.com/article/lusca-st-augustine-and-bahamian-cryptid-a364121, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lusca, staynehoff.net/giant_octopus.htm
Cryptid Chronicles readers, what do YOU think??
Please post your comments!
Discover more cryptids and mysterious creatures at Cryptid Chronicles and please vote in our Cryptid Tournament!
If you enjoyed this post please comment, Like ❤ and share! Thank you!
Your Chronicler,
Sydney C. Squidney
cryptidchronicles.tumblr.com
Follow on twitter @cryptidfans
Pinatubo Monster - A Volcano Lake Serpent?
In 2002, reports came out of the Philippines from Filipino villagers which told of five “huge, black creatures” swimming in the Tikis River, near the former mining village of Buhawen, scaring the Aeta families, who claimed that the large serpent-like creatures were making life dreadful for the locals.
The very first sighting of a Pinatubo Monster was the previous November when a young boy playing in the river noticed what he initially thought were logs floating in the water. Once he approached it to play with it, the serpent-like creature showed its true form, which caught the boy by surprise and thus, he gave out a loud shriek. This scream attracted other Aetas but when they got to the boy, the creature had swam away, bothered by the screaming.
But in January 12, 2003 there were a multitude of eyewitness accounts of seeing the serpent-like creature in the river basin.
Filipino villagers then appealed for scientists to help explain the large unidentified creatures seen in the Tikis river. Five of the mysterious black creatures have been spotted in the river in Bhawen since November. This baffled the Aeta tribe who live there because there is no account of such creatures in their oral history.
Dubbed the Pinatubo Monsters, they are believed to be 7ft long and 3ft wide. Children have been ordered not to bathe in the river and fishing has also been banned in case the creatures are dangerous. They have never been seen in full form, but the elongated outlines could be seen when the wind blows over the river and ripples are made in the water. They never produced any sound at daytime or night.
Joel Serrano, a village councilman, told The Philippine Daily Inquirer: “We don’t know if they are fishes or snakes or eels because they never show their heads or tails.” He is also worried what effect the ban on fishing will have on the village, adding: “Frogs are our only source of protein.”Villager Alfredo Banos said: “The children are afraid. When they come here to view those creatures, they wonder what those things really are. We don’t have answers to their questions.”
The strange creatures were also seen swimming in the river below Labuan, which is enclosed by tall, thick bushes. Since the monsters’ heads and tails were not seen, no one could venture what these locally named “Pinatubo Monsters” could be.
The call of the councilmen was answered by the Bureau of Fisheries & Aquatic Resources (BFAR) regional director, Remedios Ongtangco. Ongtangco chose 43 year-old Nelson Bien — who had already rescued the residents of Luzon’s Nueva Ecija province from an extraordinary 12-foot long eel — for the job.
Bien, who served as the chief of the fisheries resources management division of the BFAR in Central Luzon, arrived in Labuan less than a week later. Upon his arrival, the community’s tribal leaders immediately escorted the scientist to the Tikis River. After a cursory glance through a pair of binoculars, through which, according to most reports, he saw nothing, Bien wasted no time in concluding that — based soley upon the Aetas’ accounts — the phenomenon in question was most likely a school of the relatively common fish known as tilapia, who had probably congregated in groups of 500 or more.
The accounts all seem to end on this note, giving skeptics yet another excuse to practice their patented condescending smirk, but only a blithering fool would assume that an entire community — who have for generations lived on the banks of the Tikis and whose primary sources of nourishment came from the River — would confuse a school of relatively small (not to mention well known) pan fish for a quintet of 7-foot long, 3-feet wide, inky black, serpentine creatures.
Some researchers have suggested that the creatures may be a mutation spawned by the massive mercury levels said to be in the river. Whatever the origin of these beasts actually turns out to be, the fact remains that the Aeta villagers continue to fear the serpentine monsters of the Tikis River.
Interestingly enough, Lake Pinatubo was formed after Mount Pinatubo erupted on June 15, 1991. Mount Pinatubo being located near the boundaries of Pampanga, Tarlac and Zambales provinces in the Philippines offer a summit crater lake that is the deepest lake in the country at 800 m (2,600 ft) deep.
Did the eruption have anything to do with the reports of huge, serpent-like creatures seen after it’s wake, or does the fact that they were seen near a former mining village where mercury levels could be so high as to have created a mutation be relevant?
On September 24, 2008, Destination Truth aired an episode where Josh Gates and company searched for the Pinatubo Monster and discovered that changes in the river and lake may have changed the schooling habits and ecology for any creatures in the lake.
Whatever these creatures are, it has been made clear by the Aeta that these animals are unlike any eel, fish or snake that they are familiar with, and as far as we know, no other scientists have since volunteered to go further investigate.
Source Credit(s): unknown-creatures.com/pinatubo-monster.html, ananova.com/news/story/sm_494687.html, americanmonsters.com/site/2009/12/pinatubo-monsters-philippine-islands, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Pinatubo
Pinatubo Monsters illustration © 2012, Syfy, Destination Truth
Cryptid Chronicles readers, what do YOU think??
Please post your comments!
Discover more cryptids and mysterious creatures at Cryptid Chronicles and let us know what Cryptid you most believe in/find plausible!!
If anyone has more information about the Pinatubo Lake Monsters, please contact me, I’d love to hear from you. If you enjoyed this article please comment, Like ❤ and share! Thank you!
Your Chronicler,
Sydney C. Squidney
cryptidchronicles.tumblr.com
A Mexican Mothman?
A cemetery in Guadalajara, Mexico that is noted for its highly decorative architecture, pillared buildings, elegant tombs and spacious, tree-enveloped grounds, Panteon de Belen was built in1848 and closed its doors four years before the dawning of the twentieth century. But, that hasn’t stopped its residents from being highly active – which is somewhat notable since each and every one of them is, of course, quite dead!
By Nick Redfern
Nick Redfern is the author of There’s Something in the Woods and MONSTER DIARY: On the Road in Search of Strange and Sinister Creatures
Loren Coleman had the following to say: “At Bellas Artes in San Miguel de Allende, just a block from the Jardin in the Centro, in Mexico, one may observe the many murals and galleries that line the arched walls. One of them is the above Chupacabras mural. Note the panic among the people.”
Source Credit(s): mania.com/lair-beasts-monster-among-graves_article_134337.html, cryptomundo.com/eyewitness-accounts/mexican-mothman/
Cryptid Chronicles readers, what do YOU think??
Please post your comments!
Discover more cryptids and mysterious creatures at Cryptid Chronicles and let us know what Cryptid you most believe in/find plausible!!
If anyone has more information about The Mexican Mothman, please contact me, I’d love to hear from you. If you enjoyed this article please comment, Like ❤ and share! Thank you!
Your Chronicler,
Sydney C. Squidney
cryptidchronicles.tumblr.com
The Beast of Bladenboro
In 1954, a savage killer kept a small North Carolina town in a grip of terror. He left big tracks, a bloody trail and a hair-raising legend. Was it a bear? A vampire-cat? To this day, the creature remains a mystery
Bladenboro is a small community surrounded by pine forests and swamps at the southeastern edge of the North Carolina piedmont. It was also the setting for the greatest monster flap North carolina has ever seen.
On December 29, 1953 a local farmer reported a large, cat-like creature had attacked one of his dogs and dragged it into the underbrush. On New Year’s Eve two more dog carcasses, reportedly completely drained of blood, were found. The next day, two more dogs were attacked. Something was hunting animals in Bladenboro.
The two butchers at the Dublin IGA grocery store are a little confused about what exactly “the Beast of Bladenboro” was. A Revolutionary War tale, one says. The other jokes that he knows what it is: His daddy.
Just up N.C. 410, in Bladenboro, a man with a graying five o’clock shadow pays the gas station attendant for a bottle of Sun-Drop. He notices someone not from around town and strikes up a conversation.
“Yeah,” he says of the beast, “I’ve heard of it, but I don’t know what it is.”
These folks shouldn’t feel too bad. To this day, nobody really knows what, in 1954, went around killing dogs, goats, hogs and small cows in the most unusual way – breaking their jaws, crushing their heads flat and sucking the blood from their bodies, according to local newspaper reports.
It was downright gruesome. Women and children stayed locked in their homes. Men dared not walk outside without some kind of firearm. Big-game hunters from around the country infiltrated Bladenboro, a town about 60 miles west of Wilmington.
The Beast of Bladenboro was big news then, but today, the story is buried in clumsy rolls of microfiche. Local headlines only give sensational clues: “Mysterious Beast is Still At Large,” “Vampire Tendencies Found In Bladenboro’s ‘Monster,’” and “Guns, Dogs Circle Blood-Lusty Beast.”
Only a few people who experienced the fear are still kicking around Bladenboro. Ask the people at Town Hall if they know anybody who was around when the beast roamed, and you’ll get a pretty good chuckle. But you’ll also get a file of newspaper stories kept in the town vault. And Delane Jackson, town manager, will direct you to Tater Shaw, a man who saw the carnage first-hand.
“Vampire lust”
Shaw lives in a nursing home not too far from Town Hall. On a recent October morning, the 87-year-old man, with his perfectly combed hair and neat long-sleeved gray shirt, sits in the commons area, people using walkers and canes clunking all around him.
“You want to know about the beast?” he says, throwing his hand up as if to shoe away someone. “Oh, you don’t want to talk about that. I’ve told that story before.”
It takes a little encouragement, but before long, he guides his electric wheelchair down the long, waxed linoleum corridor toward his room. You know you’ve reached it when you see a plaque on the door, “Tater’s Place” burnt into the wood.
Inside, bright family portraits and black-and-white World War II navy photos hang on the wall. Shaw glides over to a small table and pulls out a three-ring binder with typed pages out of the drawer. Years ago, a friend of his wrote a screenplay about the beast and based a character on Shaw. He seems quite proud of that.
Then, after shutting the book, Shaw gets comfortable in his wheelchair and says, “It started out one morning.”
Shaw, then the 35-year-old owner of a gas station, had heard about a goat killed on a fellow’s farm out on the edge of town. He’d been told there was something mighty odd about how it died. Curious, he decided to go see for himself.
“His head was flat as a fritter,” he says. “It had a great big ol’ track … It was weird.”
Shaw spreads four fingers of his right hand and places them on his left palm, simulating the size of the paw. Then he looks up and says the beast killed small cows, too, and “two or three” hogs.
Those details are missing from newspaper accounts of the time, though the Wilmington Morning Star (what is now the Star-News) and the Wilmington News, as well as others, thrived off the story for a good part of January 1954.
The stories start Jan. 4, 1954, with the deaths of three dogs, their “skulls crushed in and chewed.” There’s no mention of a goat, but then there’s a lot about this beast that is only uncovered with time.
People were already getting distressed enough to cause Police Chief Roy Fores to go out hunting for the killer with three coonhounds. The “dogs refused to follow the trail.”
Maybe they were smarter than their master. The next day, the chief released a chilling detail. Fores called it the “vampire aspect of the animal.”
The story in the Morning Star on Jan. 5 began, “This nervous town chewed its collective nails today, dreading the pitch of night that might bring a return visit by a mystery killer-beast with vampire lust… (Fores) said a dog found killed last night ‘was opened up today. And there wasn’t more than two or three drops of blood in him.’ In all three cases, the victims’ bottom lip had been broken open and his jawbone smashed back.”
People gettin’ crazy
Shaw remembers the fear. “Everybody was scared,” Shaw said. “Everybody, near ‘bout, that had a gun was carrying it.”
Irrationality began to set in. Locals claimed to have seen the beast, described it, then retracted their statements.
Another resident got trigger happy. He heard his dogs barking one night, looked through a window and saw a shadow. Grabbing his shotgun, he rushed outside, blasting away. On closer inspection, he found his child’s bicycle “crumpled to the ground with the tires in shreds and the seat ripped with buckshot.”
Witness accounts of the beast conflicted. Some said it was about 90 pounds, others said 100 or even 150 pounds. Some claimed it was black, or brown, or tabby, or just “dark in color.” Most people agreed it was a cat, but one veterinarian said it could be a big dog.
The sound is about the only thing people halfway agreed on. They described it as like either a baby or a woman crying, only louder and blood curdling.
“Anyhow, it was getting so bad, it was getting in the newspapers and the radio,” Shaw said. “There came hunters from all over, I mean big hunters.”
At the height of the hunt, according to newspaper accounts, 1,000 men armed with pistols, shotguns and rifles divided into posses and combed about 400 acres of swamp. Some were fraternity boys from UNC Chapel Hill looking for a good time; others were professional hunters accustomed to killing lions and tigers.
Bladenboro only had about 1,000 residents at the time. It only has about 1,700 now. You’d think that if anything was out there, somebody would’ve stepped on it.
Many of these hunters would stop by Shaw’s gas station on their way to the Green Swamp and brag about how they were the ones who were going to kill the beast. Those same men usually stopped back by after the hunt – and always empty-handed.
A friend of Shaw’s, Jabe Frink, also owned a gas station during this time. Frink lives in a brick house just a couple miles from the nursing home. He’s 82 and doesn’t mind talking about beast at all. Frink remembers one group of hunters who brought trained “bear dogs” to turn loose in the swamp. “They said they gonna ‘catch that vampire,’ but they never did,” he said.
Mostly, Frink remembers how terrified everyone was. “It kept snowballing and snowballing. It got so nobody would walk out on the street at night,” he said. “There was a dog that scared that lady on her porch, though.”
Frink is referring to a 21-year-old mother named Mrs. C.E. Kinlaw. She apparently walked out onto her front porch at about 7:30 p.m. January 6, 1954. She was minding her own business when she looked up and saw the “beast” stalking toward her. It was only about 20 feet away, she told the Morning Star.
Kinlaw screamed and ran into the house. Her husband, Charles Kinlaw, grabbed his shotgun and ran outside but only found cat-like paw prints all around his yard.
Everyone’s worst fears seemed to be confirmed. The beast had shown interest in a human.
Not long after that, S.W. Garrett, an experienced hunter from Wilmington, warned women and children to stay indoors. Residents were also advised to keep dogs, “whose nighttime howling reportedly grows more piteous nightly,” locked up indoors.
By Jan. 6, the victim count was up to at least six dogs including one that was dragged into the swamp,never seen again. The next day, the count jumped to seven.
As victims multiplied, town officials became more desperate.
Chief Fores considered tying a few dogs up in the woods as bait but Mayor W.G. Fussell called off.
The mayor may not have had his heart into the project anyway. His day job was owner of a local movie theater and he found a way to capitalize on the beast.
Fussell distributed flyers announcing: “Now you can see the cat. We’ve got him on our screen! And in Technicolor too! The Big Cat, all day Saturday, January 9.”
The day the movie ran, Fussell made another announcement — the hunt was off. The Morning Star headline that day read, “Vampire Beast Wins Battle of Bladenboro.”
The reason for the halt was safety, Fussell said. With so many hunters in the swamp, someone was liable to mistake a man for a beast.
Then, on Jan. 13, it seemed the mystery had come to an end just as quickly as it began. On that day a bobcat was caught in a steel trap, then finished off with a bullet to the brain.
Still, no one was certain this bobcat was the beast, not even Mayor Fussell.
“I just hope this is it,” he told the Morning Star. “If not, I just hope the other one starts down the road and keeps going.”
At home, Frink opens a drawer by his recliner and pulls out three square black-and-white photos. One shows his business partner, Bunny Prevatt, squatting over the cat at their gas station. Another shows Prevatt with a man named Blanco Duvall, holding the beast up by its front legs. The cat’s head only comes up to the man’s waist.
The last photo shows a crowd of people lined up to gawk at the outstretched feline.
“Cars were lined up around the block wanting to see the bobcat,” Frink said.
Seems the beast had the last laugh, though. That cat was barely cold in the grave when another headline ran: “Bladenboro ‘Beast’ Returns from Hiding.”
“I saw the hog,” Frink said. “That was about the last thing that happened.”
So what was the Beast of Bladenboro?
In 2008, the History Channel television series Monster Quest performed an analysis concerning these attacks, which were beginning to happen again, and concluded that the attacker might have been a cougar.
But what about the possibility of the beast being a Lynx? Or a lynx hybrid? The above illustration by Gary Longordo was based on specific features described by local eyewitnesses. Although their range once extended down into the northern portions of the United States, Canadian lynx have only been confirmed in Maine, Montana, Idaho and Washington, but could it be possible that if they show up in the continental U.S. at all, that one could have traveled out farther in search of food? They are twice the size of the southwestern bobcat and can get up to 40lbs.
Whatever the Beast of Bladenboro was, the story lives on as a time when all eyes focused on a usually quiet little town. So far, no one has been able to find any definitive evidence about the existence of the Beast of Bladenboro. Most attacks do not seem consistent with known area predators, so what could be lurking out in North Carolina’s swamps?
Source Credit(s): northcarolinaghosts.com/piedmont/beastofbladenboro.php, © Amy Hotz starnewsonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061029/NEWS/61027007/1051&tc=ar
Top Illustration: A rendering of the beast of Bladenboro © Gary Longordo
Bottom Illustration:John James Audubon (New York, 1785-1851) New York Lynx Canadensis…Canada Lynx, plate XVI, from [The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America,] 1845-1848
Cryptid Chronicles readers, what do YOU think??
Please post your comments!
Discover more cryptids and mysterious creatures at Cryptid Chronicles and let us know what Cryptid you most believe in/find plausible!!
If anyone has more information about The Beast of Bladenboro, please contact me, I’d love to hear from you. If you enjoyed this article please comment, Like ❤ and share! Thank you!
Your Chronicler,
Sydney C. Squidney
cryptidchronicles.tumblr.com
Night-Ravens - Or What’s In A Name?
What, if anything, is a mysterious winged creature known as the night-raven?
The answer to this question depends upon whether you are investigating it from an ornithological, cryptozoological, or zoomythological standpoint - because three entirely different creatures all share this same intriguing name.
In Norway, the nattravn (‘night-raven’) is simply a name given to the European nightjar Caprimulgus europaeus or goatsucker. End of story.
Conversely, the night-raven that appears in English literature is a much more diffuse subject. It was a certain William Shakespeare who penned the following tantalising lines: “The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time;” (3 King Henry VI, V.vi.47), and “I had as lief have heard the night-raven, come what plague could have come after it.” (Much Ado About Nothing, II.iii.81). Equally, in his The Faerie Queene (II.vii.23), Edmund Spenser wrote: “And after him the owles and night ravens flew, the hateful messengers of heavy tidings,”. And according to John Lyly in his play Sappho and Phaon (1584), the owl’s shriek and the night-raven’s croak were fatal. But what is the night-raven, this ill-omened bird that appears in such esteemed works of literature yet is singularly absent from any comparably notable ornithological tome?
Several identities have been offered, including the nightingale (even though its famously musical, uplifting song hardly corresponds to the night-raven’s hoarse croak of doom), the afore-mentioned European nightjar, the bittern, various species of owl, and even the night heron (curiously, the latter’s scientific name is indeed Nycticorax – ‘night crow’ – although it shares no resemblance with any corvine bird). However, as elucidated by Edward Armstrong in The Folklore of Birds (1958), it is most likely that the night-raven is of mythological rather than ornithological status, deriving from Norse legends in which the raven is identified with Odin who in turn became identified with the Wild Hunt tradition, featuring spectral hunters riding through the sky at night with a pack of howling dogs – which in literature are extensively associated with the night-raven.
Undoubtedly the most fascinating member of the night-raven trio, however, is the mythological nattravnen (‘night-raven’) of southern Sweden. I first learnt of this extraordinary entity from Swedish cryptozoological artist Richard Svensson, whose wonderful illustration of it heads my present blog. On 2 October 2008, in response to a request of mine for information concerning it, I received the following detailed account from Richard, who kindly permitted me to publish it if I so wished, and which I am therefore delighted to do here, for the very first time anywhere:
“Nattravnen is found in the folklore of Sweden’s two southernmost regions, Skåne and Blekinge. It’s not very well known in general Swedish folklore, and it’s not considered a mystery beast per se, like the Lake Storsjö monster, for example. It’s called Nattravnen in Skåne and Leharven in Blekinge. The name “Nattravnen” is said to mean “the night raven”. Leharven is a more dubious name. “Le” is an old word for bodily joint (and I’ll get back to why that’s a part of its name). Nattravnen is seldom described in detail, but it is a bird-like monster, sometimes said to be dark in colour, but without any feathers. It belongs to a special group of monsters called “grimmar”. Grimmar are supernatural animals that cannot be killed by any normal weapons. They are either ghosts of animals or beasts created by sorcery.
“Nattravnen flies around during the night and is said to devour any lonely wanderer on the roads. But the monster was also dangerous in another way. If you looked up just as it passed the moon or when its body was illuminated by the moon rays, you would be able to see the skeleton (and its joints) through the creature’s thin hide. This was a very bad thing and the sight would render you horrible pains. Mostly you would fall terribly ill and vomit blood or get blood in your urine for at least a week.
“There is an old story from Blekinge concerning Lake Halen, where in old times a flying monster lived. This creature is not actually identified as Leharven, but it appears to have many similar traits. According to legend it resembled a vulture, but without any feathers. When returning to the lake it would not perch in a tree, but dive down under the water and disappear. In the 1970’s a local school adopted the creature as their mascot and dubbed it “Halengamen”, “the Halen Vulture”.
“If I’m not totally mistaken this aquatic connection rings a bell concerning the African “Kongamato”. And the feature about getting ill from watching the flying beast also seems familiar, from something in the West Indies, perhaps.
“There’s also a folktale about a giant vulture sweeping down and grabbing an oxen in an area of Blekinge called Jämshög. The name is said to be derived from “Gamshög” =”Vulture’s Peak”, a hill where the creature is said to have been observed seen sitting. This tale is generally considered as a tall-tale, with no real etymological verification to the name of Jämshög. It’s still interesting as a Swedish counterpart of the American “Thunderbird” tales.
“I’ve done two illustrations of Nattravnen, where I’ve chosen to depict it as very pterodactyl-like.”
From a Norwegian goatsucker and a corvid of Odin to a monstrous Swedish neo-pterodactyl - who would ever have guessed that a name as innocuous as ‘night-raven’ could have conjured forth such a dramatic diversity of creatures real and imaginary?
Source Credit(s): © Dr Karl Shuker 11 November 2010 karlshuker.blogspot.com/2010/11/night-ravens-or-whats-in-name.html
Top Illustration: The terrifying nattravnen or night-raven of southern Swedish folklore © Richard Svensson
Cryptid Chronicles readers, what do YOU think??
Discover more cryptids and mysterious creatures at Cryptid Chronicles and let us know what Cryptid you most believe in/find plausible!!
If you enjoyed this article please comment, Like ❤ and share! Thank you!
Your Chronicler,
Sydney C. Squidney
cryptidchronicles.tumblr.com
The Solomon Islands’ Giants
Are there True Giants on the Solomons? It would appear that from the people there who are newly communicating what they have known for years, yes, there may be.
Marius Boirayon, Research Director, Solomon Anthropological Expedition Trust Board Incorporated, is one of the researchers who has been doing investigations in The Solomon Islands on the accounts of True Giants. Australian Boirayon who lived and worked in the Solomons as a helicopter pilot and engineer, ended up marrying a Solomon Islander. He grew to know and appreciate the culture, the folklore, and the day-to-day interaction between the natural history of the area and the people living there. Before long, he began hearing about the stories of the giants and decided to write of what he was learning.
In his book, Solomon Island Mysteries, Boirayon first chronicles the information he was gathering from the natives, of whom his wife is one, from the Solomons. He came to know that there were giants on islands, one that was large, over 10 foot tall, with evidence that supports that the giants do grow much taller than that. These Guadalcanal Giants, as he calls them, have very long black, brown or reddish hair, protruding double eyebrows, bludging red eyeballs, flat noses, and wide gapped mouth facial features. Awareness of them is shown by the newspapers, as well.
Harry Trumbore’s illustration (above) is of one of the Malaysian True Giants, locally called Orang Dalam. They are said to be upwards of 20 feet tall, and similar to the ones seen in the Solomon Islands.
“The Solomon Islanders…are lacking the understanding that their Giant race [would be a] big scientific discovery to the rest of the World. Whether by design or not, it is appropriate that the Solomon Island’s National logo is ‘The Place That Time Forgot,’” Boirayon points out.
Boirayan has collected firsthand accounts of the sightings of the Giants, said to be over 15 feet tall and which leave footprints around construction sites. There are even kidnapping stories. He shared on one website the following: “The Guadalcanal people, and many others, all know the story of ‘Mango,’ whom passed away two years ago. She had been kidnapped by the Giants fifty years ago and spent 25 odd years with them, and like them all they had given her up for dead until she was found pregnant, hysterically frothing from the mouth in a garden on the Northeast coast. A Giant had taken her as a wife. When the men realized who she was, they tried capturing her, but because her skin was as slimy as an eel, they found it difficult holding her. One of the men got an ingenious idea and got some particular rough-sided leaves of which they used to hold her down and tie up with vine. Understandably, she was mentality unstable for the remainder of her life, but through her pregnancy she gave birth to a half-cast boy. The bastard boy lived to the age of five when one of Mango’s brothers slaughtered him. Peter and a few other friends of mine know where he is buried. Mango is just one of many that this type of thing has happened too, but you don’t have to believe me, just ask them. There are quite a few more.”
Is Melanesia a fertile new area for groundbreaking research on True Giants? Of course it is. It took a man who married into the culture there to crack a layer of silence that often exists for outsiders.
Sydney’s Note: Don’t these giants sound very similar to the Sasquatch, Bigfoot, Yeti, Yowie and other such suspected hominids to be found in other parts of the world?
Source(s): © Loren Coleman October 28th, 2010 cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/solomons-giants/
Top Illustration: Japanese soldiers encounter a True Giant in the Solomon Islands by Brian Snoddy snellsoftware.com/briansnoddyart/
Cryptid Chronicles readers, what do YOU think??
Discover more cryptids and mysterious creatures at Cryptid Chronicles and let us know what Cryptid you most believe in/find plausible!!
If you enjoyed this article please comment, Like ❤ and share! Thank you!
Your Chronicler,
Sydney C. Squidney
Adjule: Mystery dog of Africa
Africa has always been a place of mystery. It was called the “Dark Continent” for hundreds of years and for many reasons. Not the least of which were the number of animal mysteries that the continent contained. There was a time when locals would talk of the apes but no white person would ever believe that a hairy man-like creature could live in the jungles. That was until white scientists finally saw one in the early 1900’s.
Since then there have been all sorts of discoveries in Africa and they continue to this day. Are we certain that all that Africa has to offer has been discovered? Perhaps not; perhaps we will someday add the Adjule to the list of known animals in Africa.
The Adjule also known as the Kelb-el-khela (male) and the Tarhsit (female) are canine-like creatures which are claimed to inhabit only desert regions, and they are almost exclusively reported to inhabit North Africa in the Sahara Desert.
As you may know, Africa has a number of canine species and one or two that appear to be canines but are not. Hyenas are not canines although they appear to be. Africa has a couple of species of Jackals, like the Black-backed Jackal and striped Jackals. It has some species of Foxes such as the Bat-eared Fox.
The most notorious of the African canines would be the African Wild Dog. This dog has only four toes and can get as tall as 43 inches.
The Adjule has been reported in various parts of the Sahara Desert. Their range is shared in some places with the African Wild Dogs. In fact, some have claimed that the Adjule is either a group of misidentified African Wild Dogs or a genetic remnant of the Wild Dogs.
Can it be as easy as that? Can this cryptid canine simply be an African Wild Dog or some genetic cousin? Those native to the Sahara region of Africa have reported these canines for years. Some reports have come from a few non-native folks.
These first reports/sightings of the dog-like creatures were made by the local people known as the Tuaregs near Mauritania. These sightings were recorded by Théodore Monod in 1928. However, recent reports place them in Koro Toro, CHAD.
One unconfirmed sighting occurred in 1992. The report was from the resident hunters of the village in Western Mauritania. The animals were described as being dog-like creatures which hunt in packs. (IUCN/CSG, 1997).
This canine cryptid is described as being approximately two and a half feet tall, with feet that are webbed, and having rough thick crimson colored skin which has a bluish tint. Descriptions have the wolf-like creature weighing in at about thirty to forty five pounds. The Adjule are not lone creatures. The hunting packs number from three to thirteen.
The Adjule sometimes is reported to have some supernatural powers. The local tribesmen of the Sahara say it uses pheromones to cause great contention or discord among the area’s residents allowing them to hunt their prey. There are no records or mention of the Adjule attacking humans.
There are no known photos of the Adjule. In many cases involving cryptids, the local people have known about the reclusive animals in the region as long as the locals can remember. Many have developed into mythical creatures of legend and lore. However, these legends are usually based on truth, but science will not accept the existence of the creatures until science discovers them. Who is correct? The choice boils down to the local human population who knows the area, animals, and lives off the land; or scientists/biologists whom have never been in the area except for an expedition or two.
Was the last reported sighting of a pack of Adjule in 1992 the last of this animal? Despite being described as an animal resembling a wild dog this has not ever been confirmed for Lycaon pictus (African Wild dog) species. In the legends and stories of the people who believe in it, this creature will most likely live on.
Source(s): helium.com/items/1672168-adjule-mystery-dog-of-africa, examiner.com/article/cryptozoology-the-adjule-bush-dog
{{Illustration Needed. To submit an illustration for this article please click here.}}
Cryptid Chronicles readers, what do YOU think??
Discover more cryptids and mysterious creatures at Cryptid Chronicles and let us know what Cryptid you most believe in/find plausible!!
If you enjoyed this article please comment, Like ❤ and share! Thank you!
Your Chronicler,
Sydney C. Squidney
‘Houston Batman’ remains mystery decades after reported encounter
My friend Ken Gerhard was featured in this news story “The legend of Houston’s Batman; The giant creature that haunted the Heights” on Houston’s KTRK. For those who missed it, here is the video about the mysterious, flying humanoid that was reported back in the 1950s.
This was also the perfect opportunity for Ken to announce his long-awaited book about the flying humanoid phenomenon which will be published next year (and which I might be able to get you a sneak preview)!
In his previous book, Monsters of Texas, Ken wrote about one of the strangest of all Texas cryptids - a somewhat Mothman-like creature that became known as the Houston Batman, and which briefly provoked terror in the city of Houston nearly 60 years ago.
Check out this video to hear the strange and spooky story of the Houston Batman!
The Houston Chronicle article detailed the encounter:
”Hilda Walker, a 23-year-old housewife, and two of her neighbors were sitting on their front porch, and suddenly Hilda noticed a large shadow moving across the lawn,” Gerhard said. “It was then that they could make out its form.”
One of the witnesses, Howard Phillips, a tool plant inspector, told the Houston Chronicle, “I could hardly believe it, but I saw it.”
All three witnesses had a similar description of what they saw that night.
“It appeared to be a very tall man or manlike figure standing about six and a half feet tall but with bat-like wings attached to his back,” Gerhard said. “Also seemed to be encased in a halo of glowing light.”
Was it a large bird, maybe an owl? Let me know what you think!!
Discover more cryptids and mysterious creatures at Cryptid Chronicles and let us know what Cryptid you most believe in/find plausible!!
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??
Discover more cryptids and mysterious creatures at Cryptid Chronicles and let us know what Cryptid you most believe in/find plausible!!
Hunting the (other) loch monster in Morar, Scotland
Matador Nights editor Tom Gates takes us on a hunt for Nessie’s much shier — but perhaps more compelling — lake monster cousin.
MORAG IS A LOCH MONSTER with a terrible publicist. Although slightly famous in Scotland, tales of Morag have not spilled into coloring books or Hollywood films. A bit of a sensation in the late sixties, the beast’s home of Loch Morar has shied away from publicizing sightings and remains quite disinterested in a tourist trade that involves humped aquatic creatures.
The case for a monster in Morar, though, is compelling and arguably stronger than discussion of what might be living in neighboring Loch Ness. After Loch Ness, Loch Morar is the best known.
For starters, Loch Morar is the deepest body of fresh water in Europe, reaching depths of over 1,000 feet, beating it’s better known rival by 200 feet, located just seventy miles away. Unlike the peat stained waters of Loch Ness, Morar’s waters are very clear. Morar never freezes and despite being a deep-sided glacial lake it’s waters comparatively productive. 
It is largely uninhabited, flanked by a road that only covers one quarter of its perimeter — this allows for hardly any traffic around the lake, which would explain the lack of tourist sightings.
More importantly, it is the setting for sightings as sensational as any that have come out of Nessietown.
Tales of a monster have permeated the Morar area for centuries. Sightings of the creature, dubbed Morag by the locals, go as far back as the mid 1700’s when residents of the region began referring to the undulating humps, which they saw slipping in and out of the water, as funeral boats. Sightings of these humps were considered by those who lived in this pre industrialized environment to be the ominous warning of death.
According to early stories, “Mhorag” was the spirit of the loch, only appearing in the form of a mermaid when a member of the Gilles clan was about to kick. Later, tales spun of a waterhorse (or “kelpie”) that would lure riders onto its back, then drown them and snack on their remains.
If you’re laughing, you probably weren’t born in the 1700s, when it was completely reasonable to treat most of these tales as fact.
The Golden Age
Nearly eighty years after the first reported sighting in Loch Ness, the creature has started to lose its appeal, out-imagined by Pixar and the like. The romance of a loch monster just might be dead and buried, even if the animal is still alive and swimming.
Still, I wanted to find out if what I’d been hearing was true; if another loch was a more likely candidate for some kind of beastie than the infamous one near Inverness. I went straight to Scotland’s loch monster expert, Adrienne Shine, in hopes of learning a bit more before I set off to Morar myself.
Nobody would know better than Shine, who began his own Morar investigation in 1974. He was sparked by the loch’s most famous account, which made papers around the world. Says Shine:
It was the encounter in 1969 that aroused my interest. I thought if Loch Ness wasn’t the only place where there were these traditions, perhaps there’s more chance of it being real.
He hired a rowboat and drifted at night with a powerful light fixed to a camera, in hopes of repeating the encounter. After this turned up nothing but a false sighting in the form of a rock (“It taught me not to believe the evidence of my own eyes.”), Shine decided to head below water. By 1975 he was manning missions into the depths of a loch in a homemade submersible, during what he calls “the underwater phase of my work.”
Shine is difficult to pin when asked the ultimate question about what’s out there, mostly because he has no definitive evidence either way. He says,”I have no one theory because many animals and physical effects have contributed to sightings.” When asked about his favorite explanation, he offers:
I am accused of the Shine Theory. The occasional migration of sturgeon into fresh water might have started the water horses tradition.
While many argue that such a fish couldn’t live in these lochs, it is quite arguable that no fish has ever looked like a horse more than a sturgeon.
Shine is honest about why he first started hunting the now-famous beast, seeing it first as “a soft option for fame and glory.”
Thirty-five years later, it has become much more than this to him. He’s manned countless expeditions in Loch Ness, most famously with 1987’s Operation Deepscan, during which dozens of sonar-armed boats scanned and mapped the whole of Loch Ness. It proved inconclusive.
If a man like Shine couldn’t find a monster, how would I? There was one thing that Shine said that kept me going.
Wherever these traditions seem to come to the surface now, there’s always a perception that they’re copying Loch Ness.
It was his way of saying that Morar had been written off as a copycat. Could Morar just be a place that had been overlooked? Digging a little deeper into the history of the area, it seemed entirely possible.
Morar and the Monster
I’d been reading The Search For Morag, a history of all known accounts of the monster. Hardly a bestseller, I’d had to order this discontinued title from a collector’s shop and paid dearly for it. Written by two members of The Loch Ness Investigation Bureau expedition to Loch Morar in 1972, the hardback documents everything known about Morar, recalling over 100 years of sightings and probing that ultimate question.
The book doesn’t disappoint, recounting sightings that were, in the words of one subject, “beyond explanation or definition”. Reports generally describe a humped, “eel-like or snake-like” creature, with “black and shiny” skin. It is generally seen on sunny and calm days, when the waters are less choppy and Scotland’s rain isn’t pissing down.
The most famous sighting — the one that grabbed Shine’s attention in August 1969 — involved two local men, Duncan McDonell and William Simpson. In the account, they were on their way back from a fishing trip at the north end of the loch. It was just after 9 p.m. The sun had gone down, but there was still plenty of light. Hearing a splash behind them, McDonell, who was at the wheel, turned to determine its cause. To his astonishment, it turned out to be a creature coming directly toward them, at a speed later estimated to be between 20 and 30 mph. They describe a creature that accidentally ran into their boat while breaching the surface. Their initial fear was that it might capsize the boat. After attempting to fend it off with an oar, Simpson fired his rifle in the animal’s direction. He fired a single shot at the beast; it seemed unaffected by the blast and slowly moved away and submerged out of site. He claims,
“I then watched it slowly sink away and that was the last I’ve seen of it.”
The whole thing would have been easy to write off were there not scores of other sightings before and after.
Morar is exactly the same as Campbell described it in 1972. The town is comprised of a hotel, a train platform and about ten houses.
The Morar Hotel is one of those terrifying old white houses, the kind with squeaky floors, a mysterious staff, and wall-to-wall carpet. I was given an umbrella at check-in and warned that rain came when it pleased, and often.
I made my way down to the water under careful directions from the hotel (“Turn left at the house with the satellite that’s pointed towards God.”) and took a look. It was ominous, moody and unfathomably quiet. The skies had gone dark and threatened to spill buckets. Nothing living moved on or around the lake. The opposing shore was at least a mile away and not one boat could be seen on the water. The loch was desolate.
The water had a wake that day, mostly because of the coming and going weather. I could see quite easily why there were so many false sightings in these parts — every rock or wave looked like something. One of the most common monster mistakes has been the misinterpretation of a boat wake. I could see why — a number of them caught my eye, tricking me too.
Rocks make a deceptive wake.
The rain finally started to fall as I tried my best to walk the path around the loch. It would have been impossible to circle in one day, so my plan was to make it halfway around, about another hour out from where the road ended.
In the course of six hours I saw three people, seven cars, and about ten houses. There just wasn’t much life on the loch, other than the occasional lamb or sheep.
My eyes remained on the water. It wasn’t so much that I was hoping to spot a giant serpent but more that the loch had some kind of draw, a quiet power that demanded attention. There was no doubt in my mind that if there is ever to be something discovered, it could be found here, rather than in a populated place like Loch Ness.
Half a day later, I was back at the hotel, sans monster story and waterlogged.
But Is There Something?
Nobody would talk to me.
I’d been warned about this from a few people but it was surprisingly true — the town has zero interest in kicking up a story and attracting tourists. It would seem that the fame of the 1969 sighting was enough of a taste for everyone.
I did speak with one woman who wished to remain anonymous. She said that the area was largely run by one of the older families and that they wanted nothing more than for the world to leave them (and their sheep) alone.
The mandate was that if you spoke, there’d be hell to pay. She herself has seen something in the water but brushed it off as quick as it was out of her mouth. “It was probably nothing.”
The sightings in The Search For Morag are all that really remains of the hunt in this loch and may serve as the end of any formal investigation. But they’re still compelling to this day.
There is the story of John MacVarish, barman at the Morar Hotel, had a sighting on August 27 1968:
“I saw this thing coming. I thought it was a man standing in a boat but as it got nearer I saw it was something coming out of the water. I tried to get up close to it with the outboard out of the water and what I saw was a long neck five or six feet out of the water with a small head on it, dark in colour, coming quite slowly down the loch. When I got to about 300 yards of it, it turned off into the deep and just settled down slowly into the loch out of sight. The neck was about one and a half feet in diameter and tapered up to between ten inches and a foot. I never saw any features, no eyes or anything like that. It was a snake like head, very small compared to the size of the neck-flattish, a flat type of head. It seemed to have very smooth skin but at 300 yards it’s difficult to tell. It was very dark, nearly black. It was 10am, dead calm, no wind, brilliant sunshine. I saw it for about ten minuets travling very slowly: it didn’t alter its angle to the water. It looked as if it was paddling itself along. There was very little movement from the water, just a small streak from the neck. I couldn’t really see what was propelling it but I think it was something at the sides rather than behind it.”
And Charles Fishburne:
“It passed within thirty-fifty yards to port…three large, black hump-shaped objects moving quickly through the water.”
Or Kate MacKinnon:
“It was rather like a huge eel…the neck was about one foot in diameter and was black in color.”
What is Morag , the Lake Morar creature?
While there is no doubt that Loch Morar possesses an adequate food supply to support a population of large animals, it is unclear exactly what the creature might be. The majority of sightings describe a creature bearing an undeniable resemblance to the long extinct plesiosaur, but if such animals where to have survived they would have had to adapt to far colder water temperatures than their ancestors are thought to have been able to handle. Biologist Roy P. Mackal has suggested that Morag, the Loch Ness Monster and the other so called monster sighted around Scotland are zeuglodons, a primitive snake like whale believed to have gone extinct over 20 million years ago. Other theories which have been put forth to explain Morag sightings include sharks, seals, eels and even mats of vegetation.
Morar lies in a glacially deepened valley on Inverness-shire’s west coast. Twelve thousand year ago, as the ice retreated, sea water is believed to have invaded the lake, bringing with it an abundance of marine life. Even after the sea water retreated, for a few thousand years the sea animals now in the loch may have had fairly ready access to their oceanic home, because the loch level and the low-tide level were only one-third then what they are today. The sea level at high tide would have been within a few feet of the loch level.
A member of the Centre for Fortean Zoology that participated in the 2005 Loch Morar Expedition has put forth his suspicion that it is a giant sterile eel. The theory is that the common eels swims out to the Sargasso Sea to breed then die. The baby eels follow scent trails back to their ancestral fresh waters homes and the cycle begins again. Sometimes, however a mutation occurs and the eel is sterile. These stay in fresh water and keep on growing. Known as eunuch eels no one knows how old they get or how big. In February 2004 two Canadian tourists came upon a 25-foot eel floating in the shallows of Loch Ness. At first they thought it was dead but when it began to move they beat a hasty retreat. In the 1980s a 20-foot eel was reported in the Birmingham Ship Canal. Another 20 foot eel was supposedly caught in the cooling system in some aluminum works in Dores in the 1990s.
One theory suggests that these rare, naturally occurring, mutations may now be on the increase due to pollution. PCBs and Beta Blocker chemicals have long been implicated in causing sterility in fish. Could they be causing more eunuch eels in the deep lakes of Scotland?
Regaurdless if Morag is a eunuch eel, a prehistoric relic or an evolved new species yet to be officially categorised, Loch Morar does have an adequate food supply to support a population of large animals.
Even if somehow some animal escaped extinction and made its home in this huge lake, with its huge size and deep water, it may take a long time to be able to find any substantial proof of the existence of the Morag.
All of the credible tales have to make you wonder if there is something out there and, if so, what it might be. There’s plenty of exploring left to be done in these waters and plenty of stories to be fished out.
If you’re interested in trying your hand then you couldn’t find a better place than Loch Morar. Just turn left at the satellite aimed towards God and keep walking.
Sources: matadornetwork.com/trips/hunting-the-other-loch-monster-in-morar-scotland, unknownexplorers.com/morag.php, cfz.org.uk/expeditions/morag/morag.htm
Cryptid Chronicles readers, what do YOU think??
Discover more cryptids and mysterious creatures at Cryptid Chronicles and let us know what Cryptid you most believe in/find plausible!!
