CryPtoReports.com

Last November, the Centre For Inquiry (CFI) hosted Monsters of the Deep! at Conway Hall in London’s Red Lion Square. Meetings devoted to marine cryptozoology are few and far between, but then the same might be said about crypto­zoology meetings in general. Meetings about academic crypto­zoology are rarer than sightings of crypt­ids themselves. Organised by Stephen Law, the meeting featured talks by Dr Charles Paxton, a fisheries ecologist at the University of St Andrews, and yours truly, a vertebrate palæontologist who works on dinosaurs and other Mesozoic reptiles at the University of Portsmouth and dabbles in academic cryptozoology. In addition to the talks, we held two workshops. As Charles stated early on in his talk, academic funding for cryptozoological research is essentially non-existent, so the audience could rest assured that their valuable tax pennies were not being frittered away on any of the research they were going to hear about.

Sea monsters inspire wonder, and that can’t be bad. But Charles explained that they also raise the very important question of how science deals with anomalous data. Forteans (indeed, Fort himself) have asserted that science ignores what it cannot explain. In fact, scientists have a tendency to ignore anomalous data only so long as they’re poorly recorded (in other words, are known only from anecdotes); irrefut­able records of such things as St Elmo’s fire, rogue waves and sprites – all origin­ally known entirely from anecdotes – show that science is ‘happy’ to accept the validity of low-frequency anomalies once the data are good enough. Furthermore, while there’s a widespread belief (particularly prevalent among scient­ists) that anecdotal data are worthless, anecdotes are important at several levels of the scientific process, including in hypothesis formation. Indeed, once a hypothesis (random example: that hippos might practise cannibalism) becomes accepted by a given research community, the chiming in from others in that community is often taken as verification, even though these addit­ional records are typically anecdotal (“I want to report that I’ve also seen hippos practising cannibalism”).

As was noted by both speakers, the possibility that unknown animals might really be at the bottom of sea monster reports should at least be considered as a possibility, and indeed it is already widely thought among biologists that large marine animals (large = more than 2m long) remain to be found. Animals of exactly this sort have been found in recent years and include several new cetaceans, an oarfish species and some deep-water rays. Furthermore, cumulative discovery curves for large marine animals suggest that – while discovery rates have slowed – there are almost certainly a few such species yet to find (between 10 and 50, depending on the study).

There’s no denying that many people (scientists included) have gotten involved in sea monster research because they really do like the idea that big, monstrous vertebrates might await discovery. But it’s evident that we should consider as many other options as possible before approaching this conclusion, and it can be argued that this hasn’t been the case so far. Hoaxing remains a problem. Sea turtles, leopard seals and other known species may account for some sea monster accounts, and Charles and colleagues achieved global notoriety in 2004 by proposing that the serpentine genitals of male whales might explain some sea-serpent accounts.

Whether sea monsters are real or not, the large number of catalogued sightings (over 1,000) means that a substantial amount of data is available for statistical analysis. Charles recently published the results of one such study in Journal of Zoology (a significant accomplishment) and some of the conclusions are surprising, especially to those who might assume that sea monster sightings all represent misid­entifications or hoaxes.
For one thing, most recorded monster sightings don’t normally occur at great distance, but at relatively close range. So the ideas that sea monsters (whatever they are) might be timid, or that people are seeing known species at great range and misidentifying them, are not supported by the reported data. A number of possibilities might explain the counter-intuitive closeness of the reported creatures. Maybe sea monsters are attracted to boats, maybe boats approach sea monsters in order to get a better look at them, maybe sightings are embellished in order to sound more impressive, and so on. Perhaps the most likely explanation is that the reporting of anomalous marine phenomena is biased, and that people only tend to report observations made at relatively close range. More distant objects, whether they’re anomalous or not, are less likely to be reported. This implies, suggested Charles, a strong reporting bias that might swamp any original biological signal.

Moreover, Charles discussed the results of experiments which show that people consistently underestimate the distances involved when viewing objects on the water. And while descriptions of an object are generally good, size estimates are not so hot, with women generally underestimating sizes while men generally overestimate them (insert hilarious wisecrack). One nice point Charles made is that what is reported is not the same as what is remembered; what is remembered is not the same as what is perceived; and what is perceived is not the same as what is seen.

The second talk of the day (my own ‘Sea monsters and the prehistoric survivor paradigm’) was more concerned with the various sea monster identities that have been proposed over the years, particularly those invoking the alleged survival to the present of large tetra­pods known only from the fossil record, specifically plesiosaurs, mosasaurs and basilosaurid whales (zeuglodonts). The idea that such creatures might have survived to the present day without leaving any fossil record really is untenable based on what we know, and the annoyingly persistent suggestion that cœlacanths demonstrate how a group of Mesozoic marine animals might persist without leaving any fossil record is a red herring. [1]

In any case, the prehist­oric survivor paradigm (or PSP) really isn’t the best explanation for the crypto­zoological data. Modern sea monster reports really don’t describe creatures that sound at all like the fossil animals they’re sometimes likened to. Long-necked sea monsters sound only very superficially like plesiosaurs; the modern creatures are reportedly hairy, have whiskers or external ears, can hold their heads and necks well out of the water in an erect pose, and are sometimes noted as lacking tails. If such creatures are real, it seems reasonable to interpret them as weird marine mammals (perhaps as large peculiar seals), not as strongly modified post-Cretaceous plesiosaurs.

Long-bodied sea monsters – apparently able to form hoops, loops and a series of waves along the body – cannot be basilosaurid whales, which were incapable of oscillating in this way and are absent from the fossil record for the last 30 million years at least. The fact that basilosaurids were conventionally (but very incorrectly) reconstructed as serpentine creatures capable of furious vertical wriggling has helped fuel the notion that they might have been the ancestors of modern sea serpents.

Bernard Heuvelmans regarded two of his nine sea monster kinds as basilosaurids. However, rather than regarding the long-bodied, serpentine types as modern representatives of this group, he proposed that the armour-plated ‘many-finned’ and bumpy-backed ‘many-humped’ were both basilosaur­ids. His logic was somewhat obtuse: absolutely integral to his identification of the ‘many-finned’ was his interpret­ation of the 1883 Vietnamese con rit account conveyed by Dr A Krempf in 1921. Yet this account described a gigantic segmented creature, covered in plate-like armour sheets that “rang like sheet metal” when struck. This fantastic description remains an enigma, but Heuvelmans’s conclusion that the creature was an armour-plated whale is peculiar and rests on the idea that basilosaurids were armoured, a proposal that had been disproved decades earlier.

While it might seem like an unfair criticism, a major theme that emerges from these considerations of the PSP is that those who have endorsed it are often behind the times as regards the state of palæontological knowledge, or have indulged in a remarkable amount of special pleading and speculation. Ideas about plesiosaur and basilosaurid survival seem to have been influenced by popular artwork more than by technical data. Sea monsters might be real, but we’re really not at the stage where we can say what they are. Interesting things can be done with the data we have (whether or not it represents sightings of unknown giant creatures), but the main problem afflicting the cryptozoological literature concerns interpretation. It’s evident that more intellectual rigour is often needed within the field.

In the first workshop session that followed the talks, Charles – working with a bold volunteer from the audience – used ‘fishes’ (marked straws) in a bucket to show how biologists can generate hypotheses about species divers­ity in the deep sea. With every handful, a different combination of ‘spec­ies’ is trawled up, and by counting the new ones Charles was able to generate a discovery curve. As is the case in the real world, the curve of the discovery graph rose to a plateau, but problems in distinguishing the new ‘species’ from those encountered earlier on in the experiment echoed a huge, genuine problem that plagues diversity studies.

In another workshop event, we used a computer program to show how extinct­ion dates can be estimated for extinct (or supposedly extinct) organisms. When good ‘proof of life’ data (that is, dates) are available, the computed extinction results look robust. However, a spotty or gappy pre-extinction record results in uncertainty over the extinction date – and here’s the fun part – because the creatures affected by such results are sometimes those hypothesised to have survived later than ‘officially’ thought. Cœlacanths, Steller’s sea cows, thylacines, megatooth sharks and many others were all subjected to the treatment. This technique has great promise and enables hypotheses about ‘prehistoric survivorship’ to be properly tested.

Overall, the meeting was a great success, and our interested audience made wholly positive noises about the event. Frankly, it was good to be at a crypto­zoology-themed event where scientific approaches were very much to the fore. Indeed, what might be the take-home message from the day was that crypto­zoological data and hypotheses are very much amenable to scientific testing. It goes without saying that there remains an enormous role for amateurs within the field of mystery animal research.

In a 2004 Nature article (yes, Nature: one of the most august scientific journals in the world), Henry Gee – inspired by the then-new discovery of the small, recently extinct hominids of Flores – wondered whether it really is time for crypto­zoology to “come in from the cold” and be recognised as a valid scientific endeavour. Some might say this already happened back in the 1980s when the International Society of Crypto­zoology published its technical journal Crypto­zoology, but such efforts seem all but forgotten nowadays and the death of the ISC arguably created the impression that crypto­zoology is a fringe discipline best avoided by anyone serious about doing science. The fact is, we seem to be at the start of what is (I hope) a modest renaissance in ‘scient­ific crypto­zoology’. Charles and I – and others – have published several crypto­zoological analyses within the pages of technical journals, such as the august Journal of Zoology and Historical Biology, and we have other technical studies in preparation. How far can we go with this, and can cryptozoology really ‘come in from the cold’?

Source: forteantimes.com

A California-based production company has heard about the legend of a sea creature in Raystown Lake, referred to locally as Raystown Ray, and is coming to the area next month to investigate.

A.J. D’Agostino, an associate producer with Base Productions of Burbank, said a team of 10 people will visit the area on?April 27 and 28 to spend time on the lake and gather information from people who think they may have seen the creature.

Matt Price, executive director of the Huntingdon County Convention and Visitors Bureau, who has been in communication with Base, said the company is producing a six-episode show and dedicating half of one of the episodes to Raystown Ray. He said it may air on the SyFy Channel. A release from Base said the show, on the paranormal, is to be broadcast in June.

“We are looking for people to be interviewed on the show,” D’Agostino said. “Eyewitness accounts are the best … people who have been near the lake or on the lake who would be willing to share their story. If they have photos or videos, that would be amazing.”

Base Productions decided to investigate after viewing information on the Web site raystownray.com. The Web site was created five years ago for reporting sightings, photos and gathering information.

“We saw the most recent photo of Raystown Ray and that looks pretty compelling,” D’Agostino said. “We have a team of investigators who look at video clips and photos of things that are either aliens, strange creatures or ghosts.”

The investigation will focus on the Seven Points area, where a recent sighting of the sea monster was reported, she said.

“This will be our first field investigation,” she said. “We hope to find evidence.”

One witness on the Web site wrote, “We saw it from about 50 yards from us when it raised up, it’s head moved from side to side. It made no sound. I’d say it was at least 20 feet long.”

Witnesses can post information on sightings by visiting the Web site and e-mailing their story or photo plus contact information.

D’Agostino said witnesses should think about when and where they saw a creature, what they saw, what they heard, and what they thought about it.

Price said the investigation will go beyond talking to eyewitnesses.

“We’ve put them in touch with a local scuba diver and also with Seven Points Marina. We’re assisting them with the dive and with the fishfinder equipment and I believe … they are also talking with a fishing guide,” Price said.

Base Productions plans on being in the area for two days of production and Price said eyewitness interviews will be conducted on the back deck of the visitors center, which overlooks the lake.

Base Productions also produces “Sport Science,” which airs on Fox Sports Net, and A&E’s justice series “Crime 360.”

Price said he’s never seen Raystown Ray, but “if he exists, it certainly hasn’t affected the ecosystem much, the fish are large, vegetation is plentiful, it hasn’t disturbed swimmers.”

He welcomes the national exposure.

“It’s an opportunity to get our area on national television,” he said.

Source: alttonamirror.com

He stands 9 feet tall with stringy brown fur all over his body and glowing red eyes, and if he truly does exist, he probably lives in a forest near you.

The ape-like beast known as Sasquatch is mere legend to skeptics, but to members of the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, he is a legitimate scientific conundrum. The group regularly scours areas in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest and other wooded parts of the state in search of “squatches” — that’s right — plural Sasquatch.

Based on sightings reported by BFRO’s Web site, Washington state is effectively Bigfoot central, more specifically the densely covered Cascade foothills of Southwest Washington. The group believes Sasquatches live in complex communities with advanced social norms and complex forms of communication, including their own language.

“These people who live here, if you could get them to talk to you, they would tell you, ‘We hear them all the time,’” said Scott Taylor, a particularly active member of BFRO who led a group of eight people on a research trip near Mount Rainier National Park last Saturday. “We try to come out to places like this to meet the witnesses and sit and talk and let them get it off their chest, because many of them have been bottling it up for years.”

The group’s claim to fame is the “Skookum Cast,” a body impression of an ape-like figure found in the Skookum Meadow, in the southern portion of the Gifford Pinchot. It was unveiled in 2000 and studied by the late Washington State University anthropologist Grover Krantz, who dedicated much of his career to studying Bigfoot, along with the Kennewick Man — skeletal remains of a prehistoric man found on the Columbia River in 1996.

Taylor, a retired U.S. Marine and engineer by trade who lives in Spanaway, said Lewis County is one of his most common areas of investigation, and he experienced one of his five Sasquatch sightings while deer hunting south of Mossyrock in December. He said his attention peaked when he heard the characteristic Sasquatch “scream.”

“It’s high-pitched like a chimp, but with much more timbre, like a growl. You experience a primal sense of fear,” Taylor said. “I scanned the slope and saw a creature on all fours dart from one tree to another. And that’s common when they come into contact with people. They’ll get low to avoid being seen.”

Tyler Bounds, a Stanwood man also on the expedition, said he has spent time on old logging roads outside Morton, where he saw trees jammed into the ground with root structures facing upward. He said he heard a strange growl on the excursion.

“It sounded like a monster,” he said.

But in the world of Bigfoot, the believers are clearly outnumbered. A total lack of bones, plus purposeful attempts at Sasquatch hoaxing serve only to bolster the case for skeptics.

“It serves them no purpose to be seen by us. How often do we find bones of bears or cougars? They quickly decay,” Taylor said. “And it’s pretty easy to tell what’s real and what is a hoax.”

Another member of the expedition Saturday says he has never seen a Sasquatch. He said he’s a federally funded anthropologist, but declined to give his name.

“Once you start looking into the evidence and reading books and all .. the idea that it’s all hoaxing and misidentification, I don’t know, is it a collective hallucination?” he said. “It seems more reasonable to start looking at the idea that these things really exist.”

Bigfoot Hoaxer Ray Wallace Has Roots in Toledo

Perhaps the most famous Bigfoot hoaxer of all time hailed from Toledo.

Ray Wallace, apparently with the help of a Toledo friend, Rant Mullins, wanted to play a trick on Northern California miners in the 1950s when he was on a road-building project. Wallace made a wooden cast from an outline of a friend’s foot expanded by three times and left impressions in the ground near logging sites.

According to interviews with Wallace’s family, the hoax began as a way to deter people from vandalizing the sites but later developed into a lifelong hobby. The fake tracks helped coin the term “Bigfoot” in a headline of the Humboldt Times in Eureka, Calif.

Wallace died in 2002, but is survived by family still in the area. Bigfoot believers generally don’t buy the Wallace hoax because its announcement came after his death when family members found the foot pressings after sorting through his old junk. The Bigfoot faithful also take particular umbrage with what they say are fabricated quotes in a 2002 article by the New York Times calling Wallace’s passing “the death of Bigfoot.”

“He used to mess with us kids. Then he made those tracks at a camp down there in California — ‘course they got up the next morning real excited,” said Dale Wallace, Ray’s 76-year-old nephew who lives in Toledo. “Yep, he was a real character.”

The following are Bigfoot-related news snippets from The Chronicle’s archives:

April 12, 1982 — A retired Toledo logger said he helped create the legends of a Bigfoot creature around Mount St. Helens. Rant Mullens, 86, said he and his uncle were returning from a fishing trip in 1924 and decided to throw a scare into some miners in the area. They rolled rocks over the edge and hightailed away. Later the three miners from Kelso reported seeing huge, hairy, apelike creatures that hurled boulders down upon their cabin. The miners said they fought off the creatures with rifle fire.

Mullens said he built on the legend four years later, when he whittled giant feet out of green alder wood and a friend stomped around the banks of the Muddy River, leaving tracks for berry pickers to notice.

“I tell you, people will believe just about anything,” the solitary, retired logger said from his home in Toledo.

April 19, 1982 — H. Woodman, Napavine, wrote a letter to the editor saying he saw a Bigfoot creature in 1953.

“Going home one evening on the Rutledge Road in the Littlerock area, I drove around a corner and saw a single animal — I thought it was a bear standing on its hind legs in the road. It was taller than a 6-foot man and was brown in color. It ran across the road, leaped a split rail fence and was gone in four or five seconds.

“Sometime later, I read some literature and remembered this sighting. The animal had hind legs that were of human proportions. A bear’s hind legs are short compared to its body. When it ran away at great speed it did not run on four legs but ran erect as a man would. A bear would run on all fours… I know what I saw and the only proof I need is to remember that it was erect when it ran away.”

Feb. 10, 1997 — Ruth Steele, 73, was convinced that a Bigfoot creature was roaming the hills near her home in Dryad.

“No question about it, I seen it … I’m not hallucinating — I’ve got a good mind.”

She believed she had seen either a Sasquatch or some kind of alien three times in six months. She didn’t carry a camera with her those times, but she had begun to. All the sightings took place near rural Doty and Dryad on the semiforested River Road.

The 7-foot-something tall humanoid was covered with gray, white and sometimes black fur, she said. The animal’s face appeared pink skinned. The furry creature walked upright and wore no clothing. In the most recent sighting, in January, the creature heard her car, turned and looked directly at her. Its eyes shone red.

“It shocked the devil out of me when I seen it,” Steele said. “I thought what in God’s name is that? … He wasn’t no human. He’s never nothing I’d seen in the woods.”

During a recent sighting her daughter, Debra Steele, 41, also saw the creature. “It looked me right in the face — it scared the pants right off of me,” the younger Steele said.

Aug. 5, 2001 —  The public had its first chance to see the Skookum Cast, a plaster casting of what might be Bigfoot. Wildlife biologist Dr. LeRoy Fish, Oregon, said the heel had what appeared to be a callus.

The 3½ by 5 foot chunk of plaster held the reverse imprint of what Fish and Kevin Lindley of Mossyrock said was an unknown primate.

The impression had been discovered in Skookum Meadow in Skamania County in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, between Mount St. Helens and Mount Adams.

Bigfoot skeptics say Wallace could have been behind famous tracks found at the Ape Cave near Mount St. Helens.

Reported Bigfoot Sightings in Lewis County

1967

Winlock — “The Brinson Monster” — Startled by a tall standing beast, high school kids who were out for a night of beer drinking at their regular spot return with a rifle and attempt to kill Bigfoot.

1969

White Pass — A Washington State University student sees a roadside Sasquatch who was startled by his headlights and then stepped over the guardrail on U.S. Highway 12.

1980

Packwood — Man reports a large scream from an animal running across the back side of the High Valley Country Club.

1990

Morton — Two men cutting cedar shake blocks near a creek hear a peculiar scream on an old logging road.

1994

Mineral — Two friends see a “dirty white” Sasquatch picking branches from a crab apple tree near a farm.

1996

Morton — Two people spot a Sasquatch bathing in a pond and periodically slapping the water with huge hands.

1998

Randle — Two hunters hear unusual “whoop howl” in stand of old growth forest.

2000

Morton — Mother and daughter see “large animal with long reddish brown hair” cross the road.

Morton — Woman stops her vehicle to look at what she thinks is a bear in a roadside ditch, but when it stood up, she thought it was a gorilla. She said the Sasquatch appeared to be injured and bleeding and had a “sad look” as it crossed the road in front of her car.

2001

White Pass — Family traveling from Tacoma report a Sasquatch standing in the road.

2002

Mossyrock — Riffe Lake fisherman and his son see a Sasquatch walking in a clear-cut forest near the shore.

Randle — A man and his wife are awakened by a loud scream similar to a peacock, but louder and with more timbre. The man went outside and mimicked the call and was answered six times.

Packwood — Elk hunter is spooked to find giant footprints in snow.

2003

Morton — Night watchmen for a logging company hear a strange short scream with a deep tone and two days later describe a figure “like Andre the Giant stepping over a rope.”

2004

Doty — A dozen teenagers camping at Rainbow Falls State Park hear a strange scream after putting out their camp fire.

Mossyrock — A wife and her husband hear two strange screams while out elk hunting and camping near a clear-cut forest.

2005

Salkum — A man driving down a dead-end country road sees a nondescript “gray patch” get up and move two steps into the woods.

2006

Doty — A man hunting in a wooded area comes into direct contact with a Sasquatch, which screamed at him and then “said something” he couldn’t understand.

2007

Winlock — A man lets his dogs run in his back yard when he hears a strange scream come from Olequa Creek.

2009

Salkum — Three men sitting in a drift boat on the south side of the Cowlitz River hear a sound like a “chimp screaming” from dense brush directly across the river. They said the sound carried on wailing for a minute or more.

Source: bfro.net

Chronline.com

It is for those who claim they have seen the elusive ape-like creature roaming the woods and swamps of Florida including Polk County’s Green Swamp. Sightings of the animal have been reported around the world but rare, with quality photographs and videos even rarer.

Bigfoot and Sasquatch are names familiar to North Americans who have aggressively pursued evidence of the animal’s actual existence. As of this date only occasional sightings have been reported within any given year with no physical evidence ever found, other than hair samples whose DNA does not match that of any known animal.

Some speculate the creature is an offspring of a prehistoric monster ape that towered as tall as 15 feet and weighed 800 pounds, thought to be extinct hundreds of thousands of years ago.

A popular TV program, “Monster Quest,” which sponsors numerous expeditions to confirm reports of rare or unknown wild beasts, reptiles and giant birds, has drawn more light on the subject and predictably, claimed sightings have increased exponentially. The expeditions to confirm the beast’s existence have traveled worldwide and covered most continents.

The name Bigfoot has been associated with the ape-like creature in North America; Sasquatch for the same creature but referring to the Indian name that is centuries old. The Abominable Snowman or Yeti originated from footprint sightings in the Himalayan Mountains and has spread to most countries.

Many of the Bigfoot observations, particularly those observed in Florida’s swamp areas, including Polk County’s Green Swamp, have been reported to have a very pungent and musty rotten egg smell, resulting in the moniker “Skunk Ape.” The sightings report the creature’s hair or fur varies between black, brown or reddish – the latter similar to an Orangutan’s.

Fresh and distinctive footprints, measuring up to 15-inches, have been observed and numerous plaster cast impressions successfully recovered. At several locations where footprints of the ape-man have been seen, samples of hair also have been recovered and failed to match that of any indigenous animal, with the exception of a small percentage that turned out to be bear-related.

One is led to believe that with as many people reporting what they saw as real and described as a giant upright ape, seven to 10 feet tall and weighing up to 500 pounds or more, have, for the most part, passed polygraph testing. Observations have come from a variety of credible sources including naturalists, forest rangers, surveyors, loggers and members of professional expeditions.

All sightings reveal the creature to be bipedal, or walking and running upright on two feet.

The creature has been observed as capable of superhuman feats such as jumping over obstacles as high as five feet or clearing streams 12 feet wide with ease; feats highly unlikely for a human being to accomplish while wearing a heavy monkey suit.

Skeptics speculate the creature is a manifestation of those with a vivid imagination or simply a man dressed in a clever gorilla suit and imitating a Sasquatch. The height of the observed creatures and the size of the footprint and weight required to create a deep imprint as those observed would make it almost impossible to replicate in the remote woods by a human being.

The observed physical abilities of the creature far exceed anything humanly possible, especially in hot and humid Florida, wearing a suit of thick hair and running 100 yards or more in 90 degree weather.

Only verifiable physical evidence will erase the doubt the vast majority of people have as to the validity of Bigfoot, especially as reported in Polk County’s Green Swamp.

Fortunately, no one as of this date has shot and killed a Sasquatch to prove they exist. It would be an unforgivable act if someone did.

Source: lakewalesnews

Some say it resembles a prowling hyena, others a ferocious wolf.

While there are those who have seen the mysterious creature menacing Buckshaw Village and describe it as a terrifying cross between a wild boar and some kind of big cat.

Whatever it is, it has been blamed for mauling several deer to death, and one resident’s Alsatian dogs were left quivering with fear after a particularly close encounter.

Now one intrepid villager has taken a photograph of what locals have dubbed the Buckshaw Beast, sparking a feverish online debate about what exactly it might be.

Residents of the ‘village’ – actually a modern estate on the edge of Leyland, Lancashire – have been reporting sightings of the shaggy, hulking creature for months.

The initial consensus was that it is a wild boar forced out of the countryside by the cold weather as it strives to find food, but experts have said one would be unlikely to kill deer.

Resident Tony Kenvig caught sight of the beast as it rifled through his bins late one night, and described it as resembling a dark-coloured hyena.

‘All the rubbish was strewn over my garden,’ he wrote in an online forum.

‘This happened on a few occasions, and one night I heard snuffles and looked out of my window and saw some kind of hyena standing rigid on its back legs.’

Another, calling himself Shelley Levene, also disturbed it late one night.

‘I’ve seen it too,’ he wrote. ‘It’s not a dog. I have two Alsatians, both ex-police dogs. I saw it going through my bins.

‘I couldn’t understand why they weren’t barking, so I went down to investigate and they were shaking and cowering in their kennel.

‘Just the scent of this thing must have been enough to spook them.’

He warned fellow villagers to be on their guard.

‘I no longer walk the streets of Buckshaw alone at night anymore and would advise all other residents to start to be vigilant.

‘This beast in dangerous.’

If it is a wild boar, it would not be the first driven into built-up areas by the recent big freeze – last week the Daily Mail told how two had been spotted rooting through rubbish bins in the similarly-named Buckshaft in the Forest of Dean.

But another concerned local resident, John Russell, managed to photograph the beast using his camera phone, and he is convinced it is some kind of carnivore, blaming it for the deaths of three deer savaged on nearby parkland.

‘I can’t work out what it is,’ he wrote on the forum.

‘This was no boar. I saw it move and it had a feline movement. They say it’s to blame for the recent deer slayings.’

Whether there really is a savage beast marauding through the village, or if it is a case of mistaken identity or even an elaborate hoax remains to be seen, although local police have received no calls about it.

And Chris Bailey, from nearby Chipping Wild Boar Park, said that while it was possible that a hungry boar would attack a deer, it was unlikely.

‘There is lots of countryside around there that they could go into, so it is possible,’ he said. ‘But I’m surprised. I have heard of cases like this before – but only when they are very hungry and looking for food.’

After examining the picture, Mr Bailey said the animal’s features did not appear to match those of a wild boar.

‘Unfortunately, the picture isn’t too clear, but from what we can see, the nose seems shorter and the back legs are different. They look similar to that of a dog.’

Source: dailymail.uk.co

It seems to be Bigfoot season in Texas. Things kicked off in November with the Ninth Texas Bigfoot Conference, where squatchers from around Texas and the world gathered to discuss all things hairy and hominid.

Things really got rolling, however, when a homeless couple in San Antonio called 911 to report something very big and very stinky killing a deer outside their tent in the woods. You can listen to the astonishing eight minutes below.

And if you still need more Lone Star primate action you can talk to the fellows at JD’s Paint and Body Shop. They have what appears to be a monkey running around the back of their shop. JD’s is less than five miles from the sighting by the homeless couple and, curiously, less than a mile from the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research. One wonders if they lost a research animal. Or two.

Source: examiner

MADEIRA BEACH — If you believe retiree Russ Sittloh, the canals around Crystal Island have their own version of the infamous Loch Ness Monster.

After four sightings of the mysterious creature, he is so convinced that something’s out there that he has dubbed it Normandy Nessie.

Sittloh and his wife, Betty, say they’ve seen the creature from their Normandy Road waterfront home once in the spring, again in September and twice this month.

Nessie doesn’t have a regular routine, Sittloh says, but usually swims by in midafternoon.

The couple used to watch dolphins frolic in their canal, but since Nessie arrived the dolphins have been a no-show.

“At first, I was puzzled. I couldn’t figure out what it was. Then in September I thought it might be a python or some big snake. But then this month, I saw a caudal fin. He looks like he is over 30 feet long and about 15 inches in diameter. We are talking about a big beast out there,” Sittloh said.

When he told friends and neighbors about the first two sightings, he was met with skepticism and even laughter.

So he decided to prove his discovery. He spent $370 on a surveillance camera to monitor the canal from his window. He kept watch and downloaded both video and still pictures to his computer and then posted them on the Internet.

He even sent a letter to a local newspaper.

“At the risk of having everyone think I have lost it, gone bonkers or whatever, I must share this visual sighting with everyone,” he wrote.

He worries that the creature “could pose a real danger to people and small animals,” and particularly to those who swim or kayak in the canal.

Sittloh says his most recent sighting was about a week ago. The creature was in the middle of a school of baitfish, did a double roll and came back toward Sittloh with a “mouthful of fish.”

Now Sittloh’s Nessie sightings have gone viral on the Web.

Depending on how you structure your search, Google returns between 449 and 8,000 Web pages that reference “Normandy Nessie.”

Chatter on Web sites and blogs speculate on what Nessie could be. Guesses range from a large manatee to a Cretaceous-era mosasaur, a serpentine marine reptile that could reach nearly 60 feet long. Fortunately, it is extinct.

As for Sittloh’s first guess — a large python or snake — pythons can swim and have been reported in the Everglades. Presumably they are former pets turned loose by their owners.

A state-sanctioned hunting program reported capturing and killing 37 pythons this month. Officials estimate that 30,000 Burmese pythons live in the Everglades.

In July, an 8-foot pet Burmese python escaped from its terrarium and strangled a 2-year-old girl.

“I don’t know if we have a mutated species here or what,” Sittloh said. “Whatever he is, my God, is he big. He is some kind of big.”

Sittloh said he has warned his neighbors and called the city, but did not report the creature to the Sheriff’s Office.

“From the video, it appears most likely it is a manatee,” said Carli Segelson, media relations coordinator for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Marianne Pasha said no one else in Madeira Beach has reported seeing Nessie.

“It sounds like there is something out there, but we don’t know what it is,” she said.

Source: tampabay.com

Some of you may roll your eyes, but there are many people in Wisconsin who claim to have seen something unexplainable.

Is it a werewolf? Bigfoot? An unidentified wild animal?

First, throw out all of your Hollywood preconceptions. It doesn’t change from a full moon, and no one’s shot it with a silver bullet.

But hundreds of people right here in Wisconsin are saying there’s something out there.

If there is something out there, popular culture has done it no favors.
Most people scoff at the idea, but some claim there are many rational witnesses who’ve come face-to-face with the irrational.

Reports in Wisconsin date back to the 1930s. And they keep coming.

“All I know it was something I have never seen before.”

November 2006: Holy Hill Road in Washington County: Steve Krueger, a DNR worker, is on his daily routes picking up deer carcasses. He parks his truck and throws a small doe in the bed. When he climbs back into the cab to fill out the paperwork, his trucks starts to shake.

Added Krueger, “At first I didn’t think anything of it and it shook a little bit more vigorously a second time. I just glanced up into the rearview mirror of my truck and I saw this big, hairy, black I don’t know what it was.”

Steve threw it in drive and slammed on the gas.

“It was big, it was stocky,” recalled Krueger. “It had big pointed ears on the top of its head, and a bigger snout than what a bear has. I guesstimated it was between six and seven feet tall.”

Steve filed a report of an aggressive animal to the sheriff’s department. It didn’t take long for the media to pick up on it.

“A Washington County man says he has spotted Bigfoot,” reported NBC-15 anchor Becky Hillier in mid-November 2006.

“I was pretty scared when I saw it.” Dillon Ruder and David Radeztsky lived on Holy Hill Road nearby. A few days before Steve’s encounter the young boys were jumping on a trampoline and saw something very similar.

“We saw just a hairy monster on the corner of the woods,” added Ruder.

In both reports the media called it Bigfoot or a werewolf. But author and journalist Linda Godfrey prefers the term man-wolf.

“I have been researching it, following it, investigating it, staking it out for 17 years,” said Godfrey.

Godfrey, a Wisconsin native who lives in Elkhorn, says she’s received hundreds of reported sightings. Many of them were just miles from her home along the most famous road in Wisconsin man-wolf lore.

The Beast of Bray Road was Godfrey’s first book on the mysterious creatures that roam the woods of Wisconsin. And now her work has spawned so much interest that seven more books have followed. So many people are willing to share their stories that she is getting one to three reports a week from all across the country, and all around the world.

“Whatever it is, there is more than one. It seems to be more of a scavenger that wants to frighten people. Maybe it’s territorial. It seems to want people to leave it alone.”

Godfrey’s best guess is that it’s a Timberwolf that has evolved or adapted to stand or even run on its hind legs. But, she’s not ruling out the supernatural.

“It’s very audacious to say we know all there is,” stated Godfrey. “We know that our five senses can’t hear all that there is to hear or see all light wavelengths. Maybe there are things out there we just don’t understand.”

According to Katie Zahn, it’s definitely of this world.

“I knew it wasn’t human,” added Zahn. “I just had no idea what it was.”

In the summer of 2003, Katie and some friends were walking through these woods in Rock County. At the edge of a creek she saw three wolf-like creatures drinking water.

“They would have been kneeling down on the side of the river here,” she remembered. “They picked up the water in their hands and drank it like a human instead of licking it and lapping it like a dog would. They stood up, turned around and we got terrified. We ran back, we’re falling up the hill to get back to our car.”

Zahn’s friends deny seeing anything.

“I think they just think I’m a little crazy for believing this and actually explaining my story to someone and having them believe me.”

At least one expert says she’s telling the truth. For the show Monsterquest on the History Channel, Zahn took a polygraph, and passed – twice.

“If they don’t believe me, that is their choice,” said Zahn. “But, I know what I saw. And I believe every word of it.”

“Personally I could care less if anyone believes me. My concern in life is not to sit there and make people believe what I saw. I saw what I saw,” concluded Krueger.

“I hope that maybe someday it will all become clear and apparent,” said Godfrey. “As long as I keep getting reports I will probably file them and keep trying to figure it out. But, I certainly don’t claim to have all the answers.”

Source: nbc15

If Bigfoot exists in North America, the mythical beast is no mere ancient representative of an ape family that migrated across the Bering land mass with mastodons and ancient man, a primatologist says.

Bigfoot — or Sasquatch or Skunk Ape or Fouke Monster or whatever name you prefer — would have to be a completely new and specific species, Esteban Sarmiento told attendees at the ninth annual Texas Bigfoot Conference on Sept. 26. “If it’s real, this animal is exceedingly human-like,” Sarmiento said. “It would be our closest relative on earth.”

Sarmiento, though, wouldn’t exactly address the question of whether Bigfoot exists or whether he believes the tales about wild, hairy beasts that have drifted out of dark, wooded river bottoms and foggy rain forests for decades. What Sarmiento did say, though, is that, based on his studies of great apes in Africa, Sumatra and Borneo, whatever Bigfoot is, he’s not an ape.

Sarmiento spoke during the conference about the so-called Patterson-Gimlin film shot in 1967. A touchstone in Bigfoot lore and the believers’ burning bush, the film purports to show a female Bigfoot with pendulous breasts, striding across a rocky area in northern California.

The film has been debated by believers, denounced and debunked by critics, shown on television and dissected and disseminated on YouTube.

Roger Patterson was a would-be filmmaker who had been trying to get funding for a movie about Bigfoot. In early 1967, he rented a quality 16mm camera and convinced Robert Gimlin to travel with him into the wilderness to look for the creature . Amazingly, they found a hairy specimen walking away from them and into heavy timber in the distance. The creature shown in the film is covered in dark hair and walks with a human gait, even turning its head to look back at the camera before it disappears.

Gimlin, who’s still alive and attended the conference, swears the film is real. Patterson maintained its authenticity until his death, which happened in 1972. However, a man named Bob Heironimus has claimed he was paid $1,000 to don the suit and walk in front of the camera and out of sight.

Bigfoot and Sasquatch sightings have been common in the Pacific Northwest for decades. They’ve also been prevalent in East Texas and the surrounding big timber regions of Arkansas, Louisiana and Oklahoma.

Believers think the common traits of a 7- to 9-foot tall, hairy, wild-eyed but super intelligent beast that normally avoids humans but often is spotted walking along roadways or standing close to remote cabins are related to the same species.

Bigfoot is rare enough, they say, that he must move around to find mates and new territory, and that’s why reports have filtered in for at least 150 years.

There have been some obscure and out-of-focus photos taken over the years, and there have been Bigfoot hoaxes and claims of capture and kills, even by respected members of the Bigfoot community. But no one ever has managed a quality photo that comes even close to Patterson’s film.

Bigfoot believers — the serious ones are called researchers to separate themselves from simple believers who seem to have devout faith as well in Atlantis, UFOs, chupacabras and aliens among us — have claimed the film shows a possible descendant of Gigantopithecus blacki, a great ape that migrated across the land bridge to live in North America. Sarmiento isn’t buying that.

“A great ape (chimp, gorilla or orangutuan) can’t do this. I guarantee there’s no great ape that can do this,” Sarmiento says, pointing to the frame in the film when the creature turns in full stride to look over its shoulder at the camera. “A gorilla couldn’t do this. It can’t turn it’s head. An ape would have to stop and turn around to look at the camera.” Apes can walk on two legs, he said, but not with the stride and gait the Patterson Bigfoot uses. That’s a human trait.

“And the breast is covered in hair. Gorillas don’t have hair on their breasts. Apes only have breasts if they’re nursing, but there’s no baby in the film,” Sarmiento said. “Females usually have a baby around, and I don’t think it would leave and not take the baby.” Sarmiento added that the bottom of the Bigfoot’s foot in the film isn’t an ape’s foot with an opposable toe and even noted that it looks somewhat like a padded house shoe.

So what is it? What does the film show? “If I can’t show it either way, why would I make the call,” Saremiento said. “If it’s real it has to be a whole new species. Is it a man in a monkey suit? I don’t know. If I said that and it turned out not to be, then I’d look stupid.”

Source: statesman

The four-strong team and their Indonesian guide were tracking through dense jungle in Sumatra when two of them caught a glimpse of the famous Orang Pendek — or short man.

The group brought back a hair sample and a piece of chewed palm from the island’s Kerinci National Park they hope will provide DNA evidence of the beast.

They also snapped a strange footprint thought to belong to the creature.

Sightings of the hairy human-like monster have been made in the area since colonial times — and it is alleged to be immensely powerful.

The explorers hope the sample of rattan palm, which is thought to have been munched on by the Orang Pendek, will contain some of its cells. The palm and hair sample have been sent for testing.

Elusive

Witnesses have described the beast as being about 5ft tall and say that it walks on two legs.

It is thought to be extremely powerful — with reports of onlookers seeing it ripping apart logs.

After a spate of sightings around Lake Gunung Tuju, in the Kerinci national park, a team from the Devon based Centre for Fortean Zoology — which investigates unknown species of animals — embarked on a two-week mission to the region to see if they could obtain evidence of the creature.

The elusive Orang Pendek shares its habitat with the Sumatran Tiger, pythons, and Saltwater crocodiles.

Richard Freeman, the expedition zoologist and zoological director at the Centre for Fortean Zoology, said he believes the creature is an unidentified species of ape.

“We are not talking about a unicorn or a griffin, we are talking about an ape that’s unknown to science,” he said.

“It’s name means ’short man’ in Indonesian.

“It’s supposed to be a powerfully built upright walking ape.

“It walks on two legs rather than four – like a man, about five foot tall with dark fur – immensely strong.

“It’s been seen since colonial times.

“It’s quite possible that in some museum there are skull and bones of the Orang Pendek that have been labelled orangutan.”

The team, who have just returned from their two-week expedition, hailed it a success and are awaiting the results of the DNA tests.

Source: thesun.uk