Return of the Mega Sharks!!

Who doesn't love a giant shark story? There are fair few, as I long ago wrote about in "Mega Sharks!!!!".

It's been a while since I wrote that post and I thought I'd take a look at what's been going on in the important realm of "really ginormous sharks". Plenty it seems!

First up comes a stunning video of an incredibly large great white. Deep Blue was filmed in 2013 off Mexico's Guadalupe Island. She is very healthy looking and likely in her 50s. In my original post I lamented we may never see large great whites like this again but I'm pleased to be proven wrong.

Next up is a story from earlier this year in which Australian patrol helicopters spotted (then escorted out to sea) a 7 metre long great white just 100 metres off the shore. Again another very positive sign to see an older, larger shark still surviving despite our best efforts.

One of the largest tiger sharks ever recorded (at around 5.5m long) was killed last year off Australia's east coast. Despite it's unfortunate fate it is yet another very good sign to find we're still finding unexpectedly large specimens.

The Greenland shark can reach massive lengths, up to 6.5 metres, but new evidence has come to light that they could live for nearly 400 years! 

Last month marked the 100th anniversary of the infamous Jersey Shore shark attacks. For an epic and authoritative work based on the attacks I cannot recommend 12 Days of Terror enough. There's more on the unveiling of a new memorial to the victims here. 

But before we get too positive... yet another very sound argument against the continued existence of megalodon has come out. Come on guys, let us dream a little! ;)

Pokemon Go Sheds Light On The Loveland Frogmen Mystery

Pokemon Go is a craze that has spread around the world and, I'm sure you Dear Constant Readers will be well aware, my house with amazing speed. Catching monsters out in the wild has never been easier, getting us couch potatoes out the door in search of elusive creatures. And supposedly it has already led to encounters with some of our planet's own "legendaries".

A couple have this month claimed to have encountered and photographed (see link) the Loveland Frogmen (or at least a giant frog) whilst out playing Pokemon Go! Whilst crouched like a frog when they first saw it, it rose to its hind legs before disappearing into the night. The pictures look like a 1970s Doctor Who monster done on an even smaller budget. Sceptical? I may well be. But not as much as I am after what has subsequently happened.

I've written about the Loveland Frogmen before. In that post I quoted an interview with one of the key, claimed, sources for the myth, Mark Matthews, who made it clear he thought it was just a lizard. The latest "encounter" has allowed his version of events to come to the fore again and he made it even plainer that the creature he not only saw but also killed(!) was just a large iguana. His attempts to explain this to those who've set out to investigate the Frogmen have often been outright ignored over the years but, at last, he's getting some much needed exposure.

I love monsters. I really love frogs. And who doesn't love a good mystery? But I think it is safe to say that the Loveland Frogmen are more myth than reality. They make the Pokemon now inhabiting our mobiles seem real by comparison! Happy hunting, monster lovers!

Further Reading

UK:

US: http://amzn.to/2aYiCOl

Hunting Monsters: Cryptozoology and the Reality Behind the Myths

My love of the paranormal and weird runs way back into my early life. As a child I lapped up books on ghost stories, UFO abductions and the Loch Ness monster. When my atheism and scepticism began to slowly take me away from such childish things I went kicking and screaming (as evidenced by this blog, my attempt to hold on to the stories even as belief slipped away). Once you've allowed yourself to believe the world is a "magical" place, why would you want to wake up to reality? 

A year or so ago I read Abominable Science: Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and Other Famous Cryptids, a brilliant step-by-step take down of every major tenet of cryptozoological lore. I was by then well past belief in any woo but it acted as a refreshing breeze of sanity and science to help clear away the last delusional cobwebs. A great read which I very much recommend for really seeing how little evidence there is for pretty much any cryptid you can think of.

Now Darren Naish has written a similar book. Again it demolishes case after case. He does so with an ease that highlights just how much wishful thinking one has to put in to believing in bigfoot or Loch Ness monster just to make them seem possible.

However the book won't surprise any sceptic with a decent knowledge of cryptid lore. It feels somewhat unnecessary coming a couple of years after Abominable Science.

That's not to say it isn't a well-written, well-researched and easy to read take-down of cryptozoology. It sets out a clear, rational case to be sceptical of claims made about "undiscovered" animals. And that serves a valuable purpose in fighting woomeisters and creationists alike. 

Green Boots

Tsewang Paljor couldn't possibly have known that his choice of footwear would come to represent most of what people would know about him after he died. And how was he to know the alcove he sought refuge in following a cataclysmic storm on Mount Everest would one day be named after his boots.

May 10th, 1996 saw several expeditions attempting to reach the summit of Mount Everest. 33 people went up; 25 came down. An unexpected storm rendered those in the "Death Zone" at the mercy of Mother Nature and Lady Luck. Sadly for Paljor, among many others, there was to be no mercy.

He left the summit (though it is disputed whether he actually made it there) later than is usually considered "safe" in the company of his fellow expedition team member Dorje Morup. They were members of the first Indian team to attempt to ascend Everest from an eastern route. Their headlamps were spotted descending the mountain above the highest camp but, other than some confusing interactions with a Japanese team, they were not seen alive again. It would appear that they became separated and Paljor seems to have attempted to shelter in an alcove on the trail back to camp.

It was here that he died during the early hours of May 11th. Few can imagine what it must have been like to die alone in the dark. There was no hope of rescue, no chance of warmth, it must be one of the most terrible deaths.

And there was to be no peace for Paljor though name disappeared from memory as others took the limelight during the discussions following the 1996 tragedy. His body, like several others dotted around the mountain, was on one of the trails used by climbers between Camp VI and the summit. His distinctive bright green boots soon entered common parlance among the climbing community and the alcove where he met his end became known as Green Boots Cave.

There is something quite poignant about the images brought down from the mountain showing his body curled up almost as if he was just taking a nap (he has changed the direction he faces due to being moved a little more out of the way). His nickname might have stayed out of the public eye if it wasn't for an incident almost exactly ten years later on May 15th, 2006.

David Sharp was attempting a climb of Mount Everest on his own. He was spotted from Camp VI quite late in the day on May 14th, 2006 still attempting to reach the summit. Setting off in the middle of the night so that they might reach the summit in good time to head back, a group of climbers found Sharp sitting in Green Boots Cave mere feet from Paljor's body at about 1am on May 15th, 2006.

The first people to reach him supposed he was waiting for day light so he could see his way on the path back down, and they pointed him towards camp as there were nearly 40 climbers on the trail whose torches could provide him a way down. He didn't heed their requests and they, like the many others to follow, pushed on past him up towards the summit. He was still sat in the same position when he was encountered by Maxime Chaya and a Sherpa named Dorjee who were the first of those who passed him (though it seems they didn't see him) to descend from the summit. They attempted to revive him by dragging him into the sun light and providing him oxygen. He was unable to walk and so had to be abandoned there. His last words were "My name is David Sharp, I'm with Asian Trekking." The controversy over how he died rumbled on for a while,

For a time Sharp's body joined Paljor's in a lonely vigil at the top of the world. But it is since thought that his body has now been "removed" (pushed off the edge) out of respect. There is also suggestion Paljor's body has been taken somewhere more out of the way, though it still seemed to be in place during 2012 and it would take quite a brave person to try and move a frozen body on a very thin piece of land at that altitude.

Green Boots was somebody (almost certainly Paljor). His body remains as a testament to the fact that he tried to do something amazing. And it serves as a stark warning of what can happen to someone with little warning in a remote and dangerous place.

All Yesterdays: A Cognitive Shift In How We Look At Dinosaurs

All Yesterdays will make you love dinosaurs anew. The way we view dinosaurs, and the way that artists have depicted them, has changed greatly over the last century (and even over the last decade). Though a child of the 1980s, my love for dinosaurs started with hand-me-down dinosaur books from the 1960s and 1970s which depicted swamp-dwelling brachiosaurs and bulky, slow-moving biped hunters. At 10 years old my view of dinosaurs was changed forever by Jurassic Park (the book and movie, I was a bit of a JP junkie). Fast moving, sleek, powerful dinosaurs were now all the rage (thanks mainly to lots of paleontological research that my 10 year old self had no idea of!).

And now the shift begins again as, with newer evidence, we've begun to see feathered dinosaurs depicted. Yet... All Yesterdays points out what we are still missing... attempts, however speculative, to see dinosaurs as more than just bones, muscles and skin. Trapped by the near insurmountable lack of evidence of anything but bone and a few skin and feather impressions, scientists and artists have sometimes been guilty of failing to think about how dinosaurs would really have looked and behaved.

There is so much missing from the fossil record that this is quite unsurprising. The end of All Yesterdays presents us with how we might view modern day animals if all we had to go on was their fossilised bones. Darren Naish himself calls it "shrink wrapping" and gives a few examples on his blog here. Once you've let those imagines sink in you begin to see just how different dinosaurs probably actually looked compared to how we've been depicting them.

All Yesterdays presents fluffy dinosaurs, feathered dinosaurs that look like birds rather than feathered scaly dinosaurs, dinosaurs in extreme camouflage (their version of a plesiosaur [not a dinosaur I know!] lying silently on the sea floor disguised as coral is my favourite depiction of a marine reptile ever) and dinosaurs at play.

Almost everything in it is completely and utterly speculative. But it slams home just how inhibited and sterile our depictions have been up to now and how much more utterly beguiling the Mesozoic fauna probably was.

Scary Monsters and Super Creeps: In Search of the World's Most Hideous Beasts by Dom Joly

A couple of years ago I read Joly's amazing "The Dark Tourist". It was at once informative and laugh out loud funny. Learning about the touristic "delights" of "taboo" destinations, such as discovering that you can ski in Iran, as an absolute joy. I guess Joly was hoping to recapture that perfect travel book balance again with Scary Monsters and Super Creeps. Unfortunately he fails on one front.

This book is still laugh out loud funny. I was desperately containing snorts of laughter on the train to and from work. For that along it is worth the read, Joly has a way of seeing the world that makes his grumpy old man character seem endearing rather than tiring. However his "search" for some of cryptozoology's biggies (he calls them the "Big Six"), leaves a lot to be desired.

If you want to find out about the culture of foreign airports, basic infrastructure and how big a fool Joly sometimes felt as he gets himself into allsorts of scraps ("Are you looking for Ogopogo?" is all I'm saying!) then this is the book for you. If you want to know anything about the veracity of the tales about the "Big Six", look elsewhere.

He does take a video of a "sighting" of Ogopogo but he doesn't even take basic steps to try and work out what it really is. Here's a video that could, you never know, blow this case wide open. Or it could be some fish having a bit of a fight (which hey, might have been enlightening!). But he just moves on. He never makes it past the nearest village to Mokele Mbembe's purported location, he spends lots of time in Hiroshima and Nagasaki rather than actually looking for the Hibagon and he doesn't, understandably, get to the sort of altitudes in Nepal where the yeti is mostly reported from. And we hear more about his hot tub social encounters in Inverness than the Loch Ness monster.

It all felt very half-hearted and that just made it feel a little pointless. A shame really as it is still pretty hilarious. 

The Moose of New Zealand

On February 19th 1900, like many others at the time, 14 immigrants were bound for New Zealand. They carried with them (from Canada) the dreams of the New Zealand Government of a new enterprise. Sadly 10 of these intrepid adventurers died on the way to their new home in Hokitika on the South Island, dashing the hopes of introducing moose to New Zealand as a big game animal. The four remaining moose were released anyway and one particularly tame cow was seen regularly in the area for the next 15 years.

Despite the failure of the first introduction, the Government remained determined to try again and on April 6th 1910 10 more moose were released onto the South Island in the Fiordland area. The hopes of the backers of this project were doomed to fail. Whilst the moose did breed and were seen and hunted through the next 4 decades, their population was limited as another introduced game animal, the European red deer, out competed them for food.

The last, clear, pictures of moose in New Zealand were taken in 1953 (and can be seen here) and ever since it has been widely assumed moose had died out on the South Island. When a hunter claimed to have shot a bull moose and seen a cow and calf in the 1970s, the New Zealand Forest Service sent Ken Tustin to investigate. Ever since he has hunted and, surprisingly for this blog, found evidence that moose continue to survive in Fiordland. Dropped antlers, hair (and DNA), possible droppings and other signs point to the likely possibility they survived not only through the 1970s but still survive today.

In most cases of "introduced species" the general feeling is you should root against them, but something about the idea of some intrepid moose clinging on against all odds from a tiny population base in the most unlikely of places makes me root for the moose. I hope they are out there, getting on with their lives quietly (as quietly as moose can anyway) in the forests of Fiordland.

Who Shot Kennedy: The Driver?

Happy New Year, Dear Constant Reader. It has been a long time since this blog was updated due to a mixture of a lack of time and a lack of inspiration. However it is the year of the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and last night I finished Stephen King's 11.22.63. There is plenty of mystery (or at least plenty of things people like to claim are mysterious) surrounding the events of that event and I thought I'd take a look at some of the theories. Let us start with one of the more unexpected.

Secret Service Agent William Greer was driving President Kennedy, the First Lady, Texas Governor John Connally and the Governor's wife Nellie on their trip through Dallas. Greer was an Irish immigrant to the United States who had worked for the Secret Service since October 1 1945 (see his testimony to the Warren Commission here). He had risen up the order of seniority, driving back up cars, sometimes chauffeuring for President Eisenhower and, more often, for Mrs Eisenhower. He became the main chauffeur for the President upon the inauguration of President Kennedy.

Now for some reason people seem to see in the videos of the assassination something sinister in the driver turning around after the first shot. See this popular Youtube video.

I just don't see it. To take the shot he'd need to use his left hand. I just don't see his left hand move off the steering wheel. Further research, picture analysis and use of common sense can be found here.

This assassination is a hotbed of discussion and armchair detective work. Unfortunately in the fever to provide something "new", people are willing (on the flimsiest evidence) to accuse the most innocent of people of murder.

I'm afraid as we move into the more meatier and popular theories we shall see this on an even larger scale. Alas.

Further Reading

Stephen King's 11.22.63 - Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk

Four Days in November: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy - Vincent Bugliosi - Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk

Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy - Jim Marrs - Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk

Essex Lion... Oh Dear.

Hello Dear Constant Reader! It's been a while, there is only so many fantastic stories one can take I suppose. But something has awoken me from my slumber and that was my hand hitting my face in a particularly aggressive facepalm. So here I am again...

The UK, more precisely Essex, is in the grip of a big cat scare. This is hardly surprising as we in this country aren't strangers to big cat sightings, as we've seen before, but this time it's a lion!

Being the sceptical sort, I expected this to be yet another case of mistaken identity or a hoax. How wrong could I be? There are pictures!

Firstly, this may not be the "real" photo shown to the police. Well I hope it wasn't. 

Secondly. Can you see that photo? Does it look even remotely like a genuine photo? Not to me. The lighting is just totally wrong. Maybe it is genuine but if so... it's the worst genuine picture of animal seen since my dog attacked me while trying to photograph him. 

I have a strong whiff of bullshit in my nostrils.... 

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Bigfoot: The Ruby Creek Incident

George and Jeannie Chapman and their children were an Amerindian family who, in September 1941, lived in Ruby Creek, British Columbia.

They lived close to the railway, upon which Mr. Chapman worked. Mid-afternoon, one September day, the oldest Chapman child (who was 9) came running into the house stating there was a cow coming down out of the woods. He was agitated enough for his mother to decide to take a look at what could have upset him.

There were some bushes bordering the nearby railway tracks and she spotted what appeared to her to be a bear moving among them. She called her younger children, who were playing near the tracks, to her side and then watched with horror as the creature reached the tracks and she saw it for what it really was; a gigantic 7 1/2 foot tall man covered in light brown, 4 inch long, hair. She described it to Ivan Sanderson shortly before her death thus:

Mrs. Chapman told me that the creature was about 7½ feet tall. She could estimate its height by the various fence and line posts standing about the field. It had a rather small head and a very short, thick neck; in fact really no neck at all, a point that was emphasized by William Roe and by all others who claim to have seen one of these creatures. Its body was entirely human in shape except that it was immensely thick through its chest and its arms were exceptionally long. She did not see the feet which were in the grass. Its shoulders were very wide and it had no breasts, from which Mrs. Chapman assumed it was a male, though she also did not see any male genitalia due to the long hair covering its groin. She was most definite on one point: the naked parts of its face and its hands were much darker than its hair, and appeared to be almost black.

It continued to approach and, whilst she stood her ground, she ordered her oldest child to round up his siblings and get a blanket. Believing the creature may be after the children, she decided to use a blanket to shield them. When the creature was about 100ft from her, she held the blanket aloft and backed away with her children out of sight behind her down the river nearby and then they fled towards the village.

She hoped by concealing the children in this way, the creature may not pursue them but instead busy itself by searching the house for them. Her instincts proved correct as it did search the house and then an outhouse where it broke apart a very large saltfish barrel allowing them to make their escape.

Mr. Chapman meanwhile returned home from work. He found the outhouse door broken, and very large footprints milling around the property. Concerned, and with the stories he knew of "sasquatch" he searched the property for his family. He found their tracks by the river and saw no large footprints following them but his relief was tempered when he then stumbled upon more large footprints disappearing back into the bushes near the railway.

Over the following week fresh footprints were found around the house each morning, the dogs were heard to become very over excited at night and the couple heard unnerving noises outside. Being sensible folk, they decided to leave their house and did not return.

Later investigation details can be found here and a little video with some more details on those is below.



Further Reading 



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The Oak Island Money Pit

Whether or not there is any money under Oak Island is now pretty much a moot point with regards to its worth as a story in the grand traditions of swashbuckling epics. It is a tale of hope, faith, tragedy, failure and stupidity. 

Our story begins in 1795 with a sixteen year old boy named Daniel McGinnis. He made a discovery on the Nova Scotian Oak Island while fishing which would, over the next two centuries, cause people to lose their minds, and sometimes their lives. It was just a simple circular depression in the ground. The depression was under a tree and suspended from the overhanging branches was a tackle block (a type of pulley). This piqued the interest of his young, pirate adventure filled mind and he and a couple of friends (John Smith [in early accounts, Samuel Ball] and Anthony Vaughan) decided to "excavate" it.

A few feet down they discovered a layer of flagstones and I suspect at this point they all gave each other knowing grins. A pulley system, a hole and signs of protection on an island on the Atlantic seaboard? Did somebody say "treasure"?! As they continued to dig, and I'm sure with a little more enthusiasm now, they noticed the walls of the pit were pitted with pick marks and at every 3 meters they found a layer of logs. 30 feet down (that's 10 metres for folks like me) they decide to give up, probably not without much soul searching. They promised to come back and continue where they left off once they were better prepared. Whilst there was some talk in the press of the discovery, it took another 8 years before anyone returned to the Money Pit.


Daniel, Anthony and John plus Simeon Lynds formed the Onslow Company and set out from central Nova Scotia to resume digging. With time and media attention making the find seem remarkable, they now had the backing of an eager workforce willing to work for a slice of the treasure. This time they managed to get to 90 feet down and found layers of logs about every ten feet (3 m) and layers of charcoal, putty and coconut fibre at 40, 50 and 60 feet (12, 15 and 18 m). Now this is where things take a turn for the interesting. Supposedly at 90 feet they found a large stone with inscriptions upon it. Various people tried to translate it with one coming up with "forty feet below, two million pounds lie buried." Wishful thinking or amazing detective work? Sadly, but unsurprisingly for such a story, the stone disappeared in the early 20th Century.

The Onslow Company's dig had begun experiencing problems with visibility and waterlogging on the Saturday following their discovery and after breaking through another layer of logs they called it a day. The next day was Sunday and by the time they returned on Monday the pit was flooded up to the 33 foot mark. After a brief attempt to bail out the water, the project was abandoned until the next year. That next year they tried to drain the pit by building a second shaft, but this ultimately collapsed and, finally defeated, they accepted the treasure was not to be theirs and left the island for good.

Many years later, in 1849, the Truro company was formed by investors and they excavated down to 86 feet before the pit flooded once more. But they weren't going to let that put them off. They decided to drill deeper to see if they could recover any further evidence of what might lie beneath... the drill passed through a spruce platform at 98 feet (30 m), a 12-inch head space, 22 inches (560 mm) of what was described as "metal in pieces", 8 inches (200 mm) of oak, another 22 inches (560 mm) of metal, 4 inches (100 mm) of oak, another spruce layer, and finally into clay for 7 feet without striking anything else. A diagram of the dig at various stages can be found here to make this all a little clearer!  Frustrated by their lack of real progress, they gave up the dig.  

In 1861 a new company, the Oak Island Association, began a new attempt but the curse of the Money Pit would strike again; this time the bottom of the shaft collapsed (depending on your viewpoint either into a natural cavern or into a bobby trap). Then disaster following disaster there was the first, but not the last, fatality on a Money Pit dig when the boiler of a pumping engine burst. By 1864 the company had exhausted their funds and their options and, inevitably, they gave up. At least 8 further attempts would be made between then and the 1960s (including one in 1909 which featured a rather famous prospector; Franklin Roosevelt!) and most met with no success. One fared worst of all when a worker fell to his death in 1887.

In 1928 Gilbert Hedden read about the mystery in a newspaper and it wasn't long before he'd purchased the part of Oak Island which contained the money pit. He eventually began excavating in 1935. He attempted to dig where he thought a previous secondary shaft had been excavated in 1897. He dug 163-foot down and found several pieces of work gear and a Cornish pick. But given the amount of work carried out he couldn't ascertain whether this was from a previous dig or from the original excavation that supposedly created the Money Pit. In the 1960s the excavation was brought into the modern age with the use of a 70-ton digging crane with a clam bucket to create a huge pit, over a 100 foot wide and 134 feet deep. Despite this nothing was found. Sadly tragedy struck once more and four people lost their lives when they were overcome by fumes in the shaft.

In the late sixties Triton Alliance arrived on the scene and bought most of the island. In 1971, Triton workers excavated a 235-foot (72 m) shaft supported by a steel caisson to bedrock. According to Blankenship and Tobias, cameras lowered down the shaft into a cave below recorded the presence of some chests, human remains, wooden cribbing and tools; however, the images were unclear, and none of these claims have been officially confirmed. The shaft subsequently collapsed, and the excavation was again abandoned. This shaft was later successfully re-dug to 181 feet (55 m), reaching bedrock; work was halted due to lack of funds and the collapse of the partnership. The pictures are thought to be so fuzzy you could really see anything on them. But this still hasn't daunted diggers!

Until recently excavations had stalled due to continuing legal wranglings in Triton Alliance. But in 2008 a new company Oak Island Tours Inc has arrived on the scene to follow in the footsteps of their predecessors. This year work has begun to investigate whether to restart excavations on Oak Island

So is there really treasure in the Oak Island money pit? Could it possibly be just a sinkhole? Wouldn't that be ironic.... but it is one of the more likely theories regarding the money pit. But let us not dwell upon this too sensible, heartless theory and instead ponder who might have buried treasure on Oak Island? Many of the more romantic treasure hunters believe it is pirate treasure and not just any old pirate! Some believe that Captain Kidd used the island to store his treasure before he died, and Gilbert Hedden even traveled to the United Kingdom to follow up his belief that this was the case. These theories are given greater credence by the supposed booby trap elements, and the possibility that there is an elaborate network of "flood tunnels" leading from Smith's Cove there to frustrate any attempts to get to the treasure. It'd make One-Eyed Willie proud!

Others believe French army engineers, hoping to hide the contents of the treasury of the Fortress of Louisbourg from the British, dug the hole which might explain the complicated construction. And if you thought these theories were grand, you haven't heard anything yet... some believe a servant of Marie Antoinette managed to persuade the French Navy to hide her jewels here. And no that's not the most out there explanation. There are those who believe that the last works of Shakespeare are buried under the Money Pit and some even believe the Knights Templar (those stock conspiracy theory guys used to explain every mystery ever) buried the Holy Grail here! Now that would be a turn up for the books.

Millions of all sorts of currencies have been spent attempting to excavate this pit, in search of possible unknown amounts of treasure. 6 lives have been lost and people have spent many years of their life dreaming of what may be lying below their feet. But nothing concrete or substantial has ever been found... only tantalising hints and clues, just enough to keep hope alive and ensure that people will probably still be trying to excavate the pit in a hundred years time. And who can blame them? Whether it's a sinkhole, a hoax or buried treasure one thing the pit has offered up is a sense of adventure, purpose and mystery. Maybe that is the real treasure after all.

Further Reading

Lost Treasure of the Knights Templar: Solving the Oak Island Mystery by Steven Sora UK Amazon US Amazon

The Money Pit Mystery by Eric Walters UK Amazon US Amazon

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Giant Crocodiles

This week one of the largest crocodiles ever discovered alive was captured in the Philippines. At 6.4 metres long and over 1000kg's in weight, it puts the most well authenticated previous "largest croc" record of 6.2 m (shot in the Fly River, Papua New Guinea in 1980) in the shade. The Guinness Book Of Records states there is a 7 metre long crocodile in the IndianBhitarkanika national park, so perhaps there are even bigger monster crocodiles out there.

Sadly, as you can see in the picture above, the Filipino crocodile hasn't been treated with the respect it deserves and will now be hauled off to spend the rest of it's life in captivity. I'm hoping for a Rise of the Planet of the Crocodiles type break out in a few months time.

When a picture of Brutus, a mere 5.5m long saltwater crocodile from northern Australian, surfaced earlier this year there was a great deal of controversy over whether it was even real or not.

If you are still a Brutus denier, take a look at this video of him in action And he is a metre shorter than the crocodile captured in the Philippines! The other controversy was of course over the ethical and safety issues around humans interacting with salties... but when you get a picture like that I think there are more important things to consider such as what our future crocodilian overlords might want from us. Then there is the infamous Gustave, a supposed man-eater (with 300 purported victims), this Nile crocodile from Burundi is 6.1m long. He's inspired a movie, and regularly taunts would-be capturers. And there are still more huge crocodiles out there, like this rather large monster whose origins appear to be lost in the mists of an internet email fight...

 

But could there be even bigger one's out there? Truly gigantic monsters? There are of course reports which have been collected here and here. Given their huge lifespans it's absolutely likely there is a larger crocodile waiting to be found...

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Dinosaur Survival In The Americas?

Previously I've looked at stories of dinosaur survival into the modern era from Africa and Australia. Both interesting if completely bonkers examples of the genre, I now submit for your approval some more stories from the jungles of South America and elsewhere...

Alavaro Mesquita was a native Amazonian, who claimed to have a saurian encounter on the shore a swamp in the Rio Purús/Rio Juruá area of the Amazon basin. Whilst fishing along the shore he encountered he saw two red eyes high above the ground. Getting closer he saw what he described as a bipedal reptile, most closely resembling a Camptosaurus

He shot at the animal which fled deep into the swamp. He recounted his tale to a skeptical Rolf Blomberg, who was collecting interviews for his 1966 book Rio Amazonas

Another story, a creationist favourite, comes to us from a 1883 letter to the Scientific American called "A Bolivian Saurian,"

"“Sir,—The ‘Anglo-Brazilian Times,’ March 24th, 1883, says that the Brazilian Minister at La Paz, Bolivia, has remitted to the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Rio photographs of drawings of an extraordinary Saurian killed on the Beni after receiving thirty-six balls. By order of the President of Bolivia the dried body, which had been preserved at Asuncion, was sent to La Paz. It is 12 metres long from snout to point of the tail, which latter is flattened. Besides the anterior head, it has, 4 metres behind, two small but completely formed heads rising from the back. All three have much resemblance to the head of a dog. The legs are short, and end in formidable claws. The legs, belly, and lower part of the throat appear defended by a kind of scale armour, and all the back is protected by a still thicker and double cuirass, starting from behind the ears of the anterior head, and continuing to the tail. The neck is long, and the belly large and almost dragging on the ground. Professor Gilveti, who examined the beast, thinks it is not a monster, but a member of a rare or almost lost species, as the Indians in some parts of Bolivia use small earthen vases of identical shape, and probably copied from Nature.”"

A possible overweight Bolivian sauropod (with multiple heads)?

The fascinating adventurer Percy Fawcett also claimed to have encountered a sauropod, which he claimed was a diplodocus, along the Brazil/Peru border. This sighting occurred during a 1907 expedition on behalf of the Royal Geographical Society to map the border area. Fawcett is worthy of a post all to himself... check out his Wikipedia page and more info here. His son, Brian, later sketched the scene he imagined when he father saw the footprints of this large creature. Note the tail mark dragging in the ground, an artists imagination running away with him as current scientific opinion (and common sense) suggests dinosaurs, especially sauropods, didn't drag their tails!

Another, more detailed, 1907 encounter by Franz Herrmann Schmidt can found here. Reports of this nature by explorers in the Brazil/Peru area in the first half of the 20th century are relatively common. Later in the century we get lots of more recounting of native stories of large Mokele-Mbembe like monsters.

If you think the tales of dinosaurs in the jungles of South America are off-the-wall, just check out some stories from with the United States of America!

In a letter published in the August 22, 1982, issue of Empire Magazine, a Sunday supplement, Myrtle Snow of Pagosa Springs, Colorado, wrote that in May 1935, when she was three years old, she saw "five baby dinosaurs" near her hometown. A few months later a local farmer shot one after it took some of his sheep. "My grandfather took us to see it the next morning," she said. "It was about seven feet tall, was gray, had a head like a snake, short front legs with claws that resembled chicken feet, large stout back legs and a long tail."

But these were not her only sightings. There were two more: (1) "1 saw another one in a cave in 1937, but it was dark green." And (2) "On October 23, 1978, as I was returning from Chama New Mexico, about 7:30 P.m., in a driving rain, I saw another one going through the field towards the place where I had seen the one in 1937."

In 1934 a South Dakota farmer claimed that a giant, four-legged reptile forced his tractor off the road before disappearing into nearby Campbell Lake. Investigators found huge tracks on the shore. Prior to this sighting sheep and other small animals had been disappearing mysteriously. Source

So as always no evidence (surprisingly the Bolivian Saurian's corpse has never been located!), but plenty of explorers tales!

Picture of Camptosaurus used under license from FunkMonk

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The Open-Minded Skeptic

It's quite funny really. I started this blog during a, thankfully, brief period of unemployment whilst thinking about how I could make a popular blog about a subject I found interesting. I didn't realise how successful that'd be. I've not made as much money as from other blogs I've made (but £20 isn't anything to sniff at!) but this blog has proven to have a life of it's own. Even when my posts became sporadic and robotic, the visitor numbers have not faltered. It's the most popular and most subscribed to blog I've ever started.

So firstly, thank you to all of you who continue to subscribe (optimistic of you given my posting track record!). You are stars!

And for any newbies, let me set out my stall:

I'm a skeptic. I don't believe in sky fairies or an afterlife. I don't believe 99% of stories about cryptozoological creatures or UFO visitors or ghosts. So you might think I'm the worst person to write about the weird and unusual but in fact I bloody love the paranormal. I enjoy the stories, and I believe it's a skeptics job not to scoff at such reports but to look at them further to find out the truth behind them. Even if the truth is that people made them up, that's still a fascinating insight into the human psyche isn't it?

And I have a history. Like any good character in a horror movie, I have a dark secret from my past. And that keeps me open-minded.

Bigfoot in a garden? Or a blackbird in flight? 

This year I will return to blogging here, on various subjects but mainly on one that continues to enthral me: the mystery apes of North America (or the bigfoot or sasquatch to most people). I'm going to try and find answers to questions that have always aggravated me, such as why have we found no bigfoot remains? (I've already found interesting statistics on just how few other KNOWN great apes corpses and fossils are found). It's going to be a fun journey, and I hope you come along for the ride...

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Awesome Piece On African Cryptids

Great piece on CFZ's bloggo on some of the lesser known cryptids of the Congo. Check it out here.

For more info on giant spiders, from the Congo and elsewhere, check out my blog post here

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Zombie Apocalypse by Stephen Jones

Full disclosure: I'm a Zombie-aholic. I've seen the movies, read the books, adored the comics and just this last two weeks raved about TV series. So when, whilst wandering through my local bookstore the other day desperate for inspiration, I saw a book entitled "Zombie Apocalypse I could not walk past. 

In retrospect, picking it up and taking it home was an excellent decision. The story is told via the medium of letters, emails, diary entries, blogposts and Twitter feeds which makes it quite disjointed but not unduly so, and is very reminiscent of World War Z by Max Brooks (not a bad thing at all). It helps create a picture of the world far more easily and quickly than a normal narrative story.

Mixing humour, recent political and news events, horror and an underlying bleakness, the story rolls on quickly to a humourous if despairing end. I got through it in a matter of hours, which shows just how easily it grabs your attention.


You do care about the characters, you do get taken in by the story (I stopped reading half way through and was surprised to find there were no zombies trying to break down my door!) and it will leave any horror or zombie fan very satisfied indeed. 


An excellent book and one I wholeheartedly recommend. 


Further Reading 

Zombie Apocalypse! US Amazon UK Amazon

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The Fourth Kind

I watched the Fourth Kind last night. It's a movie which purports to based on real life events in Nome, Alaska. Those events involve repressed memories, alien abductions and levitation.

Interspersed with, supposed, real life video and audio recordings of the events and an interview with the "real life" person upon whom Milla Jovovich's character is based.

I didn't think this movie was quite as awful as the critics have made out, and found it genuinely chilling in parts. But it quickly becomes obvious (thanks both to logical deduction and VERY poor acting) that the "real life" parts are totally fake. Which takes a great deal away from the film.

It's a wellshot, diverting movie let down by some poor acting and silly attempts to make it seem true when it so obviously isn't.

Further Watching

The Fourth Kind (US Amazon) The Fourth Kind (UK Amazon)

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The Forever War

For most people World War II ended in 1945. And, though many remained in service in occupations of affected countries and in prisoner of war camps, most soldiers and support staff began the often long journey home. Defeated and victorious nations alike breathed a sigh of relief as their menfolk returned.

But for a few, the war didn't end. And it wouldn't end for quite some time to come. On December 17, 1944, 22 year old Lt. Hiroo Onoda left Japan for the Lubang Island, in the Philippines, to join the Sugi Brigade (the Eighth Division from Hirosaki). He was ordered to do all that he could to hamper enemy attacks on the island, including destroying the airstrip and the pier at the harbor, his orders also stating that under no circumstances was he to surrender or take his own life.

You are absolutely forbidden to die by your own hand. It may take three years, it may take five, but whatever happens, we'll come back for you. Until then, so long as you have one soldier, you are to continue to lead him. You may have to live on coconuts. If that's the case, live on coconuts! Under no circumstances are you [to] give up your life voluntarily.

Onoda's mission was compromised by the reluctance of more senior members of the Japanese armed forces already there and, within months, the island was overrun by Allied forces. The soldiers who survived split into smaller and smaller groups to evade capture until Onoda ended up in a group of 4 people: Corporal Shoichi Shimada (age 30), Private Kinshichi Kozuka (age 24), Private Yuichi Akatsu (age 22), and Lt. Hiroo Onoda (now age 23). They survived on meagre supplies and the occasional stolen cow from a local farm. They were not the only cells operating on the island and by October 1945, 2 months after the Japanese surrender, a campaign was launched by the Allied forces to inform the cells that the war was over. Leaflets were left on the farms where cattle were taken from:

"The war ended on August 15. Come down from the mountains!"

The group didn't understand how this could be possible and remembering that another cell had been fired upon just a few days before, dismissed it as a trick.

Over the following months more leaflets were dropped from planes, but left paranoid and without communications from superiors the group again dismissed each one after another as frauds.

For years after they lived in squalid conditions, occasionally firing on the locals:

"We considered people dressed as islanders to be enemy troops in disguise or enemy spies. The proof that they were was that whenever we fired on one of them, a search party arrived shortly afterward."

In 1949 (4 years after the war!), Private Yuichi Akatsu made his escape from the group and after 6 months on his own, he surrendered. It only served to increase the paranoia of the remaining three.

In 1953 Corporal Shoichi Shimada was injured in a skirmish, and whilst it healed left him glum. On May 7th 1954 he died in another skirmish.

For the next 20 years the remaining two continued to dutifully await reinforcements to retake the Philippines. In October 1972, now 27 years after the end of the war, Private Kinshichi Kozuka was killed by a Filipino patrol. His body spurred interest in the idea that Private Onoda, declared dead in 1959, might still be alive. However searches for him were fruitless and he continued his now lone vigil.

In 1974, a college dropout named Norio Suzuki decided to travel to around Asia. He told his friends that he was going to search for Lt. Onoda, a panda, and the Abominable Snowman. Surprisingly, on his visit to the Philippines, he found Lt. Onoda and attempted to convince him that the war really was over. Onoda explained that he would only surrender if his commander ordered him to do so.

Hiroo Onoda 1940s

Suzuki headed back to Japan and found Onoda's former commander, Major Taniguchi, who had become a bookseller. On March 9, 1974, Suzuki and Taniguchi met Onoda at a preappointed place and Major Taniguchi read the orders that stated all combat activity was to be ceased. Onoda was shocked and, at first, disbelieving.

We really lost the war! How could they have been so sloppy?

Suddenly everything went black. A storm raged inside me. I felt like a fool for having been so tense and cautious on the way here. Worse than that, what had I been doing for all these years?

Gradually the storm subsided, and for the first time I really understood: my thirty years as a guerrilla fighter for the Japanese army were abruptly finished. This was the end.

I pulled back the bolt on my rifle and unloaded the bullets. . . .

I eased off the pack that I always carried with me and laid the gun on top of it. Would I really have no more use for this rifle that I had polished and cared for like a baby all these years? Or Kozuka's rifle, which I had hidden in a crevice in the rocks? Had the war really ended thirty years ago? If it had, what had Shimada and Kozuka died for? If what was happening was true, wouldn't it have been better if I had died with them?

During his units 30 year campaign, 30 innocent Filipino's had been killed and 100 had been injured. After formally surrendering to Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, Marcos pardoned Onoda for his crimes while in hiding.

When Onoda reached Japan, he was hailed a hero. Life in Japan was much different than when he had left it in 1944. Onoda bought a ranch and moved to Brazil. In May 1996, he returned to the Philippines to see once again the island on which he had hidden for 30 years.

But he was not the last member of the Imperial forces to surrender! Teruo Nakamura had that honour, a few months later. From Wikipedia:

Nakamura was an aborigine, probably Amis, from Japanese-colonized Taiwan. Born in 1919, he was conscripted into a Takasago Volunteer Unit of the Imperial Japanese army in November 1943. He was stationed on Morotai Island in Indonesia shortly before the island was overrun by the Allies in September 1944 in the Battle of Morotai. He was declared dead in March 1945.

After the capture of the island, it appears that Nakamura lived with other stragglers on the island until well into the 1950s, whilst going off for extended periods of time on his own. In 1956, he apparently decided to relinquish his allegiance with the other remaining holdouts on the island and set off to construct a small camp of his own, consisting of a small hut in a 20-by-30 meter fenced field. When asked for the reason why he left the others, Nakamura claimed that other holdouts had tried to kill him; however, this claim was denied by three other stragglers from his group who had been discovered in the 1950s.

Nakamura's hut was discovered accidentally by a pilot in mid-1974. In November 1974, the Japanese Embassy to Indonesia in Jakarta requested the assistance of the Indonesian government in organizing a search mission, which was conducted by the Indonesian Air Force on Morotai and led to his arrest by Indonesian soldiers on December 18, 1974. He was flown to Jakarta and hospitalized there. News of his discovery reached Japan on December 27, 1974. Nakamura decided to be repatriated straight to Taiwan, bypassing Japan, and died there of lung cancer five years later in 1979.

For a full list of Japanese holdouts, see here.

It wasn't just in Asia that the 2nd World War continued in the minds of some men... in Europe Polish resistance to Soviet occupation continued until the '60s until the death of Józef Franczak. World War's are incredibly messy and history is never quite as simple as you think...

Further Reading

No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War (Bluejacket Books) (UK Amazon)

Japanese Army Stragglers and Memories of the War in Japan, 1950-75 (UK Amazon)
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Baby Ghosts In Thailand

Prepare yourselves. No seriously. Sit down, make sure you have not eaten in the last few hours nor expect to for roughly a day. Ready? Here goes....

Thai-Blogs.com has this article today, from which I'll quote...

The foetuses all come from illegal abortions. Once they are dried out, a black magic ceremony is performed to turn this into a Kumong Tong or Golden Boy. Some people believe that the spirit of the un-born child will protect them and keep them safe from danger. They are often worn in an amulet around the neck or close to the body

Enjoy.

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Piranha caught in Folkestone park pond

As soon as I return to my hometown of Folkestone, in the much loved county of Kent, a piranha is found in a pond! From the Guardian

When your chosen fishing spot is a pond inside a park in central Folkestone, it's fair to say you're not expecting to catch anything too exotic. Hence Derek Plum's shock when, after a 15-minute struggle, he reeled in a piranha.

The 46-year-old caught the half-kilo carnivorous predator at Radnor Park pond in the Kent town, some way from its normal South American habitat.

"I felt an almighty tug on my rod – next thing I knew it had dragged my line about 500 yards. It was going all over the place," Plum told the Sun newspaper.

"Luckily, the fishing hook had fallen out of its mouth otherwise I would had somehow had to remove it myself."

The Environment Agency said the fish had probably been kept as a domestic pet, but was released when it became too big for its tank.

Ben Weir, a fishery scientist of Angler's Mail magazine, said today: "I used to keep them and they would sharpen their teeth on the glass of the tank, so I know one when I see one.

"It's probably become too big for its tank but it's extremely irresponsible to release it like this.

"They are a top-end predator. I'm extremely shocked that this has happened."

The fish was identified as a red-bellied piranha, whose diet consists mainly of fish, insects and worms. The chairman of the local angling club said a member had seen someone emptying a container into the pond the week before the piranha was caught.

Paul Foot said: "Our pond gets dumped full of goldfish and the odd koi carp because people cannot afford to keep them. It's unusual that this fish survived because the weather has been so cold."

Piranhas are among some of the most ferocious predators in the world and generally attack in large numbers. They usually feed on insects and fish but have been known to strip large animal carcasses such as cows and horses.

There are over 20 species of piranhas which grow to an average of between 20cm and 30cm, although some as long as 60cm have been found.

Experts said piranhas cannot survive long-term in UK waters, but that the introduction of non-native species into the waterways can cause serious harm.

In August 2009 a freed pet piranha was also found in the River Torridge in Devon.

The Environment Agency have urged people to seek advice rather than freeing exotic animals into the wild.

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