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A man living north of San Antonio says he has quite the animal sitting in his freezer — and it may be a mythical chupacabra.

Jerry Ayer, a teacher at the Blanco Taxidermy School in Blanco, Texas, told TV station KSAT that he’s never seen anything like it.

“Different, that’s for sure, very interesting,” said Ayer.

The find comes amid a number of strange sightings in the area. The animal is gray in color with leathery, hairless skin and large fangs.

“The front legs seem to be a little bit longer than a typical coyote, very irregular and never seen any that have legs like that,” said Ayer.

Similar animals have been spotted across the country and deep in South America.

“I don’t know what to call it, I’ll just call it a chupacabra too,” Ayer told KSAT.

He said he came across the animal because a former student of his didn’t know what it was either and sought advice.

“It got into his cousin’s barn and they thought maybe it was a rodent tearing things up, and they had no idea since they’ve never seen it,” said Ayer. “He got out some poison, and this is what they got the very next day.”

Ayer said he plans to preserve the animal with taxidermy. He also said he hopes a local museum will take it for display so everyone can marvel at the strange animal.

“It’s definitely something I don’t want to throw away,” said Ayer. “I think it will be an interesting mount and a tremendous conversation piece.”

The chupacabra myth began not long ago in the 1990s when eyewitnesses claimed to have seen it in Puerto Rico. Farmers there said sheep were found with puncture wounds and were drained of blood. A total of 150 farm animals were reportedly killed by the beast. Since then, sightings have been reported from Chile to Maine.

The mythical beast also found its way into popular culture and television. CNN’s Ed Lavandera called the chupacabra the “bigfoot of Latino culture.” The animal gets its name from Spanish, chupacabra literally means “goat sucker.”

Finds like the one in Blanco have appeared on the History Channel’s “Monster Quest,” they were subsequently determined to be dogs or coyotes.

Source: wpbf

You may have to suspend disbelief here, but we assure you this is real life; you didn’t just wake up in a 1984 Ron Howard film. Somewhat recently there were multiple mermaid sightings off the coast of Kiryat Yam (near Haifa in Northern Israel) which prompted the town to offer up a $1 million reward for anyone who could prove the mythical creature exists. Once this news traveled all the way to New York, the Brooklyn-based Mermaid Medical Association got involved. (Also: there is a Mermaid Medical Association.)

The MMA isn’t at all worried that Kiryat Yam is probably like the government scientists who tried to take Daryl Hannah away from Tom Hanks, however. Nope, they’re actually suing the town for defamation, because they exist in order to defend the rights of mermaids worldwide. We really hope this does end up in International court, just so we can all read transcripts in which Kiryat Yam is berated by some Brooklynites for “badly and outrageously damaging the legendary mermaid legacy.”

Mermaids and their supporters are nothing if not fair, however, and have given the town 10 days to rescind the reward. Alas, town officials are playing hardball, and say they will “appeal to the organization which sent the letter and suggest that it join the search for the mermaid in order to perpetuate and preserve it.” Exactly, why are these two groups fighting when we’re thisclose to proving the existence of a mythical magical sea creature?

Source: gothamist

mermaid

Israel is in the grips of mermaid fever after numerous sightings of the mythical sea creature off its coast.

One town council is taking the reports so seriously it is offering a $1m (£609,000) reward to anyone who can prove the existence of a mermaid in its waters.

Kiryat Yam municipality, near Haifa , says it has been told of dozens of sightings in the past few months.

“Many people are telling us they are sure they’ve seen a mermaid and they are all independent of each other,” council spokesman Natti Zilberman told Sky News.

The nautical nymph is only seen in the evening at sunset, according to media reports, drawing crowds of people with cameras hoping for a glimpse.

“People say it is half girl, half fish, jumping like a dolphin. It does all kinds of tricks then disappears,” Mr Zilberman said.

Asked whether a dolphin or large fish could be a more rational explanation, he insisted: “They say it is a female figure, it looks like a young girl.”

The council denied its offer of a reward was a publicity stunt, but said it hoped to nurture the mermaid as something which could bring in more tourists.

Capturing a mermaid is not necessary, a verifiable photograph will do, Mr Zilberman said.

Asked if the council can afford the payout, he told Sky News: “I believe, if there really is a mermaid, then so many people and tourists will come to Kiryat Yam, a lot more money will be made than a $1m.

Source: news.sky

A shape shifter is a mythical creature that can change form at will. Many cryptids (creatures which are believed to exist but for which no conclusive scientific evidence has been found) are also linked to shape shifter legends and lore.

Shape shifting cryptids commonly reported in Michigan each and every year draw cryptozoologists, paranormal investigators, and traditional folklorists from all over the United States to study them.

In fact, you might have seen one yourself.

The Michigan Dogman  is a local cryptid that was popularized in 1987 by DJ Jack O’Malley and his production manager Steve Cook of WTCM radio. The two men invented the Dogman (or thought they did) by cobbling together various legends (like the New Jersey Devil and the Boggy Creek Monster), and then wrote a song about him that they played as a prank on their show.

To both men’s shock and surprise, reports of actual sightings of the Michigan Dogman started to pour in almost immediately after broadcasting the prank. Looking into the sightings a bit more seriously, the two men discovered that such reports had been taking place in and around Michigan since the early 1800s, when French traders visiting the local Indians referred to the creature as the loup garou (which is French for werewolf).

Numerous  people who report seeing the Dog Man describe a moment in which a creature who looks like a very unusual and very large dog suddenly stands upright and seems to transform itself into a cross between a dog and a man right before their eyes. Such transformations are typical of shape shifters.

Another kind of shape shifting creature that haunts certain parts of Michigan, especially Wayne and Otsego Counties, is a large black panther-like cat.

Reports of black panthers in places where black panthers do not belong have been occurring throughout North America and Europe for about 25 years. England continues to experience a rash of such sightings, as other parts of the United States experience them as well.

While brown cougars are native to North America, neither brown cougars nor black panthers are native to England, and black panthers are not native anywhere in the U.S. In fact, some controversy exists over whether even plain brown cougars exist in Michigan near cities, so reports of black panthers are doubly strange.

Some researchers who have studied the black panther reports attribute such sightings to escaped zoo panthers that have managed to naturalize locally, but animal biologists see this explanation as very unlikely.

Other paranormal researchers explain the appearance of the large black cats as being a manifestation of a creature that can inhabit both imagination and physical reality at the same time or shift back and forth between them, depending on conditions.

In other words, a shape shifter of this kind is part supernatural entity, but also has physical mass and physical characteristics when it wants to manifest them.

While all of this may seem incredible and strange, it’s worth noting that mainstream folklorists like Indiana University’s Thomas E. Bullard have been publishing papers on the possibility that certain kinds of folklore and certain urban legends spring from a real, physiological experience, and that such reports differ significantly from other mere stories and traditional myths.

Other researchers have tied the appearance of shape shifting creatures in modern times to the ancient Greek concept of the daemon (from which the contemporary word ‘demon’ derives). The word ‘daemon’ literally means “spirit of place” and refers to a living being that inhabits both physical and spiritual realms.

So if you’re out fishing or hunting the woods of West Michigan this summer and you spot something strange; something not quite animal and not quite human: you’re definitely not alone in what you see.

Close your mouth. Catch your breath. Grab your camera.

Source: examiner