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

Knobby Of Cleveland County

The year is 1979 and we're paying a visit to Cleveland County, North Carolina. Something odd is afoot. Strange noises "like a woman screaming" have been heare d in the woods and Forest Price found his full-grown goat, Bill, dead due to a broken neck.

Last Sunday morning, Forest Price found his full-grown goat, Bill, dead of a broken neck.

"I didn't see it happen. I don't know how it happened. All I know is that something just killed the hell out of Bill and now I've got to get me another goat," he said.

A few days earlier, Price said, something frightened his animals, causing a mule to beak a rope and escape.

Yeap. Sure enough, there were reports of a bigfoot about, first seen by 88-year-old Minnie Cook near her house on December 21st 1978. Knobby became a big hit with local news and radio programmes who used "searches" for this elusive beast as publicity stunts. Pretty soon after the initial flurry of reports, Knobby disappeared.

Until....

Timothy Peeler called 911.

Peeler, of Vanada Drive in Casar, is a self-proclaimed “South Mountain man.” He’s surrounded by woods and a ridge worthy of postcards.

It was June 5 when Peeler supposedly spotted a man-beast, upwards of 10 feet tall, that screeched like “a night bird” and grunted in the warm night air.

The creature sported dark hair, Peeler said, with a grey beard stretching to its navel.

Authorities were dispatched that morning around 3 a.m., according to a report from Cleveland County Communications.

Deputies filed a suspicious person report after investigating the incident. Source: Shelby Star

 Here's a clip from a local news station on the latest sightings:



FYI There is a sighting from the early 70s in the exact same area, so perhaps there is more to this than just a lot of hot air.

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The Beast Of Bray Road

Werewolves have been part of the myths and legends of our ancestors for centuries, leading to a great deal of fear (and no doubt a great deal of mob "justice" on misidentified "werewolves"). But for all the terror movies can add to a subject (just see our reactions to sharks after Jaws came out) in the case of werewolves they have served only to make them an ever more distant, fantasy concept. But perhaps, just perhaps, there is more to the legends than meets the eye... 


Werewolves??, I hear you cry with derision. Well maybe that's not the best word for it as it comes attached with all sorts of transformational baggage. Instead think of bipedal wolves, the canine equivalent of bigfoot perhaps, or a "wolfman". Whatever gets you in the mood. 


Today we shall be concentrating on a particular example, a creature known as the Beast of Bray Road (pretty damn awesome name if you ask me!), but in case you think tales of wolfpeople are somehow isolated incidents then please take a look here and here.


Sightings of the Beast started in earnest relatively recently in the late 1980s, although there are some older reports. Bray Road is near Delavan, Wisconsin and is the location of the first few sightings, hence the name of the Beast, although sightings have been reported across Wisconsin, northern Illinois and Michigan. 


In 1989 Lorianne Endrizzi was driving along Bray Road when she thought she saw a person hunched over by the roadside. She slowed down to take a closer look. She was no more than six feet away from it. Endrizzi clearly saw a beast with grayish brown hair, fangs, pointed ears and glowing yellow eyes (which is what you'd expect a canine's eyes to look like when reflecting headlights). "His face was … long and snouty, like a wolf" she said. Unusually she reported that this muscular creature was crouched on it's rear legs whilst holding a prey animal in it's human like hands (sketch can be found at top of this page)


She had been prompted to report her story only after hearing rumours of a more recent encounter (the year then being 1999) from a lady named Doristine Gipson. On 31st October 1999 Doristine was on Bray Road, about half a mile from where Lorianne had had her own encounter a decade before, when she felt her right front tire leave the ground as if she had hit something. She stopped the car and had a look on the road but could see nothing. But as she looked around, peering into the darkness, she saw a form race towards her. She managed to throw herself back into the car but as she tried to pull away the creature jumped onto the bonnet. Thankfully it had been raining and the wetness of the car and the movement meant it slid straight back off and she was able to escape. Later that evening she was taking a girl trick or treating and had to drive past the spot. She again saw a form lying on the side of the road where she had left it but quickly rushed away as the form began to move again.


There are older reports:  

"It all started one night in 1936 when a lone man driving down a dark stretch of US 18, just east of Jefferson City, saw a strange, hairy creature that stood at least six feet high and had a canine muzzle and strange three-fingered hands.

The beast was digging up one of the many Native American burial mounds that dapple Wisconsin’s countryside. The witness, a local named Mark Schackelman, drove on, but returned the next night to see if he could find evidence of the creature. Schackelman reports walking over to the mound, only to find the man-wolf standing there, stinking of decaying meat and growling a strange, three-syllable word that sounded like “Gadara.” The witness goes on to report that, understanding the creature to be some agent of evil, he began praying and slowly backing away until he reached his car and was able to escape." Source

And then:

Year: 1964

Location: Jefferson County, Wisconsin

Dennis Fewless was driving along Highway 89 around midnight when he saw a figure running across the road. When his headlights caught sight of the creature, it was eerily similar to werewolf seen in 1936 just a couple of miles away. Large and muscular, it stood around seven feet tall, covered in dark brown hair, with a dog-like face.

Fewless saw the creature run across the road, jump over a barbed-wire fence, and disappear into a corn field.

Fewless waited until the sun was up the next day to return to the scene of the werewolf sighting. He had hoped to find tracks to prove the size of the beast, but the ground was too hard. He was able to find the place in the cornfield where the werewolf had entered. The stalks of corn were broken and askew in such a way that supported the theory that a man-beast of massive size had been there. Source

There are further sightings listed here. Plus a few theories as to what the creature might be (in brief: a wolf, a coyote, a dog, a shunka warak’in, or a hoax). Personally? The sightings last for extremely short periods of time, usually in poor visibility and in the sort of lonely places one might start to let their imagination wander. I know, I know, this is all very dismissive and every paranormal researcher out there is preparing to hit me over the head with a piece of electronic equipment but... I've seen things myself. I know the human mind can see all sorts of things. There are plenty of brilliant and interesting stories here. But are there any wolfpeople in Wisconsin? I don't think so. But hey, I would say that! Linda S. Godfrey is the resident expert over there, and I'd suggest you check out her books to see what you think.  

Further Reading

Hunting the American Werewolf Linda S. Godfrey (UK Amazon Link)

The Beast of Bray Road: Tailing Wisconsin's Werewolf Linda S. Godfrey (UK Amazon Link)

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Nazi Survival: Roswell

Nazi survival stories are a common item on this blog. It's a somewhat macabre thing to be fascinated with, and I'm quick to distance myself from any "longing" for a scenario where the Nazi empire continued to survive past the battles of Berlin and Prague. But... it is something that presents a rather interesting thought experiment; how would the world react to the re-emergence of a Nazi regime? Just think about that for a moment!!

Whilst aliens are usually the favourite explanation for UFOs, the Nazi's appear to run a close second. We've covered this before, but it goes much deeper than I thought. Even Roswell, sacred to ufologists everywhere, comes under scrutiny as possible evidence for Nazi survival.

There's two favourite Nazi explanations: 1) as part of  Operation Paperclip the US Government was part of the experiments which led up to the crash at Roswell or 2) the Nazi's set up a still undiscovered (or at least unannounced) redoubt somewhere and were kept an eye on their old foes with UFOs when the crash happened.

For a look at that, rather unlikely, second scenario check out this timeline which basically says that if the Nazi's had survived and the governments had let their citizens know there would have been mass panic. Hmm...

Personally I think the whole Nazi survival/UFO thing is a lot more believable than the possibility that aliens are observing us (I believe in aliens existing as a general principle but I find it highly likely they would use the sort of technology it'd take to travel the distances required just to "observe" us, after all that travelling you'd think they would be a bit more chatty) . But that's not saying much.

Further Reading

Roswell and the Reich: The Nazi Connection - Joseph P. Farrell

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John Titor: A Visitor From The Future?

We've dealt with time travel before, thanks to those two famous French time slips the Moberly-Jourdain incident and the Simpson-Gisby incident.

But those two tales were of people who had supposedly accidentally slipped back in time. This tale is of a man who claimed he had travelled through time.... and he had a mission.

Part Kyle Reese and part Sarah Connor, John Titor first posted a message online on the 2nd November 2000. At first he posted under the username Timetravel_0 on sites such as Art Bell and the Time Travel Institute. Soon, having had to register a new account somewhere else, he adopted   the name John Titor. Among discussion of time travel in general, John Titor claimed to be a time traveller himself.

He said he was born in 1998, and that by 2036 was working in a government time travel project. Sent back to 1975, his mission was to retrieve an IBM 5100 portable computer which was needed to translate between some legacy IBM systems and UNIX. He claimed the IBM 5100 was able to do this due to certain in-built functions that were not documented when it was manufactured.

On his way he made a stop off for personal reasons in 1998-2001 to see his family. He also claimed to be attempting to gauge, for research purposes of course, the reaction of others to encountering a person from their future. Hence the posts on random internet forums...

John warned of a coming Second American Civil War, which would lead to a destructive Third World War. Wiki has a brief synopsis of this future history:

The most immediate of Titor's predictions was of an upcoming civil war in the United States having to do with "order and rights". He described it as beginning in 2004, with civil unrest surrounding the United States presidential election, 2004. This civil conflict that he characterizes as "having a Waco type event every month that steadily gets worse" will be "pretty much at everyone's doorstep" and erupts by 2008.

Fighting Diamondbacks Insignia 

Titor claimed that as a 13-year old, in 2011, he fought with the "Fighting Diamondbacks", a shotgun infantry unit of Florida, for at least four years. However, in other posts he describes himself as hiding from the war. As a result of the war, the United States splits into five regions based on various factors and differing military objectives. This civil war, according to Titor, will then end in 2015 with a brief, but intense, World War III:

"In 2015, Russia launches a nuclear strike against the major cities in the United States (which is the "other side" of the civil war from my perspective), China, and Europe. The United States counter attacks. The US cities are destroyed along with the AFE (American Federal Empire)...thus we (in the country) won. The European Union and China were also destroyed."

Titor refers to the exchange as "N Day". Washington, D.C. and Jacksonville, Florida are specifically mentioned as being hit. After the war, Omaha, Nebraska is the nation's new capital city.

Titor is vague as to the exact motivations and causes for World War III. At one point he characterized hostilities as being led by "border clashes and overpopulation" but also points to the present conflict between Arabs and Jews as a harbinger of World War III.

The complete forum posts, pictures and predictions of John Titor can be found here. His last forum post was in March 2001, and he has not been heard from since...

Now, you may be thinking, this is just a bunch of old tosh (and you wouldn't find me disagreeing there either!). But John explained that his presence here in our "worldline" means that we have already diverged from the timeline and in affect he came from an alternative dimension. Hence the fact things haven't turned out quite the way he says they would is not something that can be used to criticise him. But there is plenty of other criticism out there.

With most people today claiming John Titor is in fact John Rick Haber, brother of the owner of the commercial rights to all things John Titor, Larry Haber.

But perhaps, just perhaps, John Titor really was a traveller from the future who came in order to warn us all of the future we faced. Maybe he succeeded in averting disaster.

Further Reading

John Titor A Time Traveler's Tale - Written by the "John Titor Foundation" in 2003


Time Travel - Journeys into Time - DVD 


Time Travel in Einstein's Universe: The Physical Possibilities of Travel Through Time - J. Richard Gott 


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The Honey Island Swamp Monster

Photo courtesy of: Paul Mannix.

Honey Island Swamp is about 30km long and 10km wide and lies about 25 miles to the north east of New Orleans in eastern Louisiana. Despite it's close vicinity to a large urban area, the lack of roads make it relatively isolated and it is home to thriving populations of local wildlife. And perhaps to something more unusual...

In August 1963 retired air traffic controller Harlan Ford and a friend, Ray Mills, saw a huge creature in the swamp which quickly ran away leaving large prints in the ground which quickly washed away. In 1974 they again encountered something in the swamp. Whilst hunting they claim to have found more prints near a dead boar which had had it's throat ripped out. They described the creature as being covered in dirty grey hair, with clawed hands and that it had widely parted yellow eyes. It was about 7 foot (2.2 metres) tall and 400 pounds (180kg) and stunk.


View Larger Map

It may be that the creature was known of long before this first documented encounter. According to many sources, though none that I've found so far offer any proof of this, a creature known as a "Letiche" was described as "a carnivorous, aquatic-humanoid" that lived in the area by local indigenous tribes. They believed it to be a feral child raised by alligators. The local Cajuns supposedly knew it as "Loup Carou". It is now know by the far more easy to pronounce name of the Honey Island Swamp Monster.

Swamp Monster Footprint Cast

A local legend believes that in the 19th century there was a train crash nearby in which a circus was being transported. Some chimpanzees escaped and bred with the local alligator population to create this strange creature. Although this is probably the least likely theory I've ever heard, sightings do tend to point out the strange reptilian and mammalian features of the monster.

There have been other sightings by others too. From this site we get the following (video and more available there):

Ted Williams lived on the bayou most of his life. He was a trapper and worked on the swampland every day. Ted claimed to have seen the creature many times, and he knew there was more than just one of them. He said, "I could have killed them, but I didn't cause they didn't seem to want to harm me. I'd see them swimming the river and get out on the bank then dissappear in the swamp." One day while fishing one crossed the river and walked right past him. One day Ted took his boat deep in the swamp to set trout lines. He was never seen again. No one has ever found him or his boat.

Harlan Ford's granddaughter is continuing the family monster hunting tradition and has made a DVD (see below for link to DVD). Here's a video promoting it with some more eyewitness accounts



Whist the description makes it sound very much like a bigfoot (or skunk ape) as you can see from the picture of the footprint above it is not five toed creature. Either it's a different species, an isolated interbred population of bigfoot (hence disfigurement) or completely made up (which is as usual my default position!). But whatever the case it continues the tradition of American aquatic monsters... which is always good!

Here's a good skeptical account of the swamp monster.

Further Reading

Mothman and Other Curious Encounters - Loren Coleman (UK Amazon, US Amazon)

Monster Spotters Guide to North America - Scott Francis and Ben Patrick (UK Amazon, US Amazon)

The Legend Of The Honey Island Swamp Monster (DVD) (UK Amazon, US Amazon)


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Giant Spiders

Bill Gibbons, he of Mokele Mbmeme fame, has also recorded stories of another cryptid in the jungles of Africa (in this case the Democratic Republic of Congo): a giant spider.

"I first became aware of a giant ground-dwelling spider through Miss Margaret Lloyd, formerly of Rhodesia and now living in England. Her parents, Reginald and Margurite Lloyd were exploring the interior of the old Belgian Congo in 1938 when they spotted something crossing the jungle track ahead of them. At first they took the object to be a large jungle cat or a monkey on all fours. When they stopped their vehicle (an old Ford truck) to allow the animal to pass, they were thunderstruck to see that it was a very large brown spider, similar in its appearance to a tarantula, with a leg span of at least four or five feet. Mr. Lloyd trembled so much with excitement that he was unable to retrieve his camera in time to take a snap, and Mrs. Lloyd was so distraught that she wanted to return home (Rhodesia) immediately. This creature is known as the J’ba Fofi; J’ba meaning “great” or “giant” Fofi meaning “spider” (spiders of all kinds are called Fofi)."

Certainly doesn't make me want to take a trip through the Congo without a very large gun!

I will admit to having a soft spot for movies like Eight Legged Freaks

So is there any more evidence for this massive creature? Not really... the "facts" as far as they can be ascertained, thanks to Karl Shuker's Extraordinary Animals Revisited, are that the spider is claimed by members of the Bake pygmy tribe of the area to be yellow with a purple abdomen when a spiderling, growing to up to 3 feet in length and brown in colour as an adult. Its eggs are supposed to be the size of peanuts. It builds hides that resemble the huts of the local tribes, and is supposed to be able to build webs that are capable of capturing birds and small forest antelopes. It has been said to eat humans if given the chance.

There are also other stories. Monster Quest recently did a show on giant spiders in the Amazon said to be big enough to attack even humans but mainly "livestock" (for which read chickens). This is pretty similar to reports, now quite likely substantiated, of a Chicken Eating Spider which appears to exhibit the strange, for a spider, behaviour of communal living and hunting!



The problem with spiders getting to any size much bigger than a dinner plate is the level of oxygen in the atmosphere. This causes problems with the growth of land invertebrates (as per this article) which is why in the past we had giant dragonflies and arachnids but not anymore. However evolution is a tricky process and will often throw up some new way of overcoming such problems.

More Arachnid Stories:

Still On The Track: Attack of the Camel Spider

Still On The Track: The Fearsome Frog-Eating Spider of Epping Forest

Cryptomundo: Flashback: Camel Spiders and Other Giant Spiders. Check out the giant spider in Louisiana!

Further Reading

Invertebrata Enigmatica: Giant Spiders, Dangerous Insects, and Other Strange Invertebrates in Classic Science Fiction and Fantasy - Chad Arment (Editor) (US Amazon, UK Amazon)

Extraordinary Animals Revisited - Karl P. Shuker (UK Amazon, US Amazon)

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The Flatwoods Monster

Flatwoods, Braxton County in West Virginia, is a small village which advertises itself as "The Home Of The Green Monster". Who was the Green Monster?


View Larger Map

September 12th 1952, 7:15pm. Three boys Edward (13) and Fred May (12), and their friend Tommy Hyer (10) were playing football on a school playground when they spotted something in the sky.

It was a bright object streaking through the sky until it appeared to land/crash on a hilltop of the nearby Bailey Fisher farm. The boys ran back to Edward and Fred's house and related the story to their mother Kathleen May. She agreed to accompany them to the hill with torchlights and brought with her Neil Nunley (14) Ronnie Shaver (10), and 17 year old West Virginia National Guardsman Eugene Lemon. Lemon also brought his dog.

As the 8 of them drew close to the site of the crash, Lemon's dog ran ahead. Just out of sight they heard it barking at something unknown before it came running back with it's tail between it's legs.

As the first two boys, including Neil Nunley, crested the hill the object seemed to crash into, they saw a pulsating red light some way in the distance. Before they could react to that (and before they could wonder what that pungent smelling mist that was burning their eyes was), Lemon spotted two shining eyes under an oak tree and turned the flashlight towards them.



There standing before them was a 10 foot tall creature, with a round red face with a "Ace of Spades" shaped frill around it. The body seemed dark, although it later was described as "green" hence the town's name for the beast. When the creature began to "glide" towards them, Lemon dropped the flashlight and the group fled.

The authorities were called. First the police. Then the local newspaper. I'm pleased to see Mrs May had her priorities straight. If I'd just seen a 10 foot monster my first few phone calls would not have included the local rag, but probably the fire brigade, the Army, perhaps even the RNLI. But really, the local rag??

Strangely on separate checks that evening the Sheriff and his deputy found nothing unusual whilst Mr. A. Lee Stewert, co-owner of the Braxton Democrat, found "a sickening, burnt, metallic odor still prevailing". Funny that.

Further reports came in:

At 6:30 the next morning, the director of the Board of Education saw a flying saucer take off, not far from his house, and immediately reported it to the Sutton newspaper. Only then was he informed of the happening of the night before. Mr. Stewart, the owner of the paper, immediately went to the hill and could still smell the odor on the ground. He discovered two tracks where the reported object had landed. No wagon had been in this part for many years and the weeds were several feet high. The grass was freshly depressed, and closer search disclosed a piece of black plastic material which did not burn when tested by Stewart. The piece has been analyzed and we hope to get a report soon through Mr. Smith. Samples of ground and vegetation were also collected by airforce [sic] officers.

Further inquiries at the Lemon house revealed that Mrs. Lemon and a friend were having coffee at the time of the landing, and their house shook so violently that coffee spilled over the table and they thought the house had fallen off its foundation. The radio went off for 45 minutes and came back on by itself.

In his systematic questioning of everyone in the valley, Smith found that a girl, 21, of Weston, 11 miles from the Lemon farm, was confined in the Clarksburg Hospital for three weeks, after having seen a figure of the same description, and emitting the same odor reported by witnesses of the Sutton occurrence. Her mother confirmed the girl's story that they had seen the monster when they were on their way to church more than a week before Mrs. May's experience. Source: CSI Bulletin #2

What I find so fascinating about all this is that an entire mythology has grown up on this monster based on a fleeting glance of it, and that these folks were willing to go on record claiming it to be a monster based on nothing more that a few moments of contact.

Honestly, one adult amid a group of excitable young boys and an exuberant pet dog does not a convincing witness make and I quite honestly believe that this particular monster can be explained away by a meteor, some flashing aerial lights and an owl as suggested here. What depresses me most is that people seem desperate to explain these sorts of things away by the weird rather than erring on the side of caution. Bless 'em.

Further Reading

The Braxton County Monster: The Cover-Up of the Flatwoods Monster Revealed - Frank C. Feschino (UK Amazon, US Amazon)

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Red Eyed Beasts

I'll never forget my encounter with the Shadow Man. I will admit that I can now, rarely, sleep with the door open which is a vast improvement on the past and owes much to the gentle coxing of my ever patient other half, but most nights I just stare into the darkness around my closed bedroom door and wonder what might be behind it. My major issue has always been those red eyes. And I'm disturbed by how often these red eyed monsters appear in the world of the paranormal.

Bigfoot for instance. Here are just a few reports:

Red Eyes At The Window

8 Foot Tall And More Red Eyes

More Red Eyes At The Window (I have a phobia of exposed windows at night as well as open doors and yes... that is a proper phobia not a "oh that slightly worries me" sort of fear so maybe I should stop right now...)

The British Man Monkey is even more consistently described with red eyes.

Our old friends, the Ghostly Black Dogs, are regularly described as having red eyes. And our new friends the Alien Big Cats... RED EYES

More information and analysis can be found here with mentions of other cryptids with red eyes and some rather wonderful theories to explain this phenomenon (including science... ooo...)

So there we have a theme. A rather worrying and concerning theme, especially for someone like me who deeply dislikes 1) glowing red eyes and 2) silly non-scientific theories to explain things. I can reason away bigfoot sightings as being of an unknown great ape, I can explain Alien Big Cats as an introduced species. But how can we explain away all these red eyes? I still think Three Men Seeking Monsters by Nick Redfern puts forward the most interesting theory. Could it be all these creatures are one and the same entity? Or at least entities. The Cormons, a group of monsters from another dimension who feed off our emotional reaction to them and take many forms to encourage different emotions... angels, fairies, monsters, aliens, UFOs. Could all our favourite fortean creatures simply be disguises for emotional vampires, and are we, by way of simply talking about them, perpetuating a never ending feeding cycle?? Makes my head hurt, especially at this time of night.

Rabbits: Not As Cute As You Thought!

But I thought I'd just point out... red eyes are everywhere. And they might be watching you!! Night night, sleep well ;)

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Under The Sea

Moonlight Investigation does have somewhat of a fascination with aquatic fortean happenings, but that is not without reason. The sea is, for humans, one of the most inhospitable environments in the world. The ocean depths are even more inhospitable. Man has permanent outposts in space, on Antarctica and has long learnt to thrive in desert conditions. But we have yet to do anything more than observe the ocean depths from a moving vehicle, which can spend only a limited time below the surface. Our long term submarine capabilities are awesome but the military subs hardly offer a good viewing platform!

So it should be no surprise that not only do we find a lot more "unexplained" things in our oceans, but that the possibility of them being something unknown rather than misidentified is far greater. And that surely includes taking into account the fact that it's much more difficult to identify something that's submerged in water.

The Pacific Sleeper Shark

We've looked at "unnaturally" large sharks before but having read up on the subject some more, it's hardly an exhausted topic!

Just when you thought it was safe to go into the water...

The Pacific sleeper is a rarely seen shark species first identified in 1944. They are generally found to be somewhere between 3 and 4 metres long (9 to 12 feet).Given that the sharks have been found to feed on giant and Colossal squid it's hardly surprising that some have reported Pacific sleeper sharks of quite a size more!!

The French submersible "Nautile" was exploring the waters off of Japan in 1989 when they encountered a Pacific Sleeper who they said slid past them revealing it's full 23 feet length (that's about 7 metres to you and me!). That would place it at a size larger than any officially verified non filter feeding shark known to be alive today.

The Reefquest centre mentions this sighting but also another sighting:

Another large individual — estimated to be between 16 to 26 feet (5 to 8 metres) in length — was photographed by a robot camera at a depth of 6,300 feet (1,920 metres) off Oahu, Hawaii.

If it were 8 metres long that would be truly astounding!!

The Giant Octopus

Before we mention the tales of giant octopi, I just wanted to share this video of a blanket octopus. To my great shame I had never heard of this species before, but my isn't it beautiful? I suggest you read up on it as it is as fascinating as it is gorgeous.

Hypno-Octopus strikes again!

Anyway, we all know of the Kraken right? The gigantic monster octopus of legend who pulled ships deep under the water, and brought death to many a sailor? Well... it's not that unbelievable! Larger than expected octopi have been found, like this one from New Zealand.

But a truly gigantic octopus would need truly gigantic food. Over to the story that I first read when I was little and has had me wondering ever since (taken from here but seems almost exactly the same as I remember it).

summer of 1984. One fisherman from Bermuda islands, John P. Ingham, came up with an idea which would be very profitable for him. Giant octopus was way out of his mind when he constructed a trap for large crabs and other sea organisms which he would use at a depth of about 1800 meters (5900 ft). His plan worked and soon he started catching crabs 60 cm wide.
Then he built really heavy traps and armored them with 5 cm thick metal rings. They were 1.8 to 2.4 meters large and 1.2 meters deep. Ingham was dropping them into the ocean from his 15-meter fishing boat Trilogy.
By the end of August, Ingham already noticed few very unusual things. First he lost one of his traps after something suddenly pulled the cable. There was no obvious explanation. Then, on 3rd of September, few days after the first event, the crew was pulling out one trap, but when the trap was 600 meters (2000 ft)
below the surface something stopped its ascent, pulled the cable in the opposite direction and violently shaked the cable. The trap was lost.

Then, on September 19, Ingham set the trap at a depth of 850 meters (2700 ft). This time, they couldn't pull the trap out even with full engine power. Trilogy was equipped with a sophisticated sonar instrument called chromascope, and Ingham used it when the ship passed directly above the trap. He set the chromascope to
so-called split bottom mode. On the bottom of the ocean he could clearly see a pyramid-shaped silhouette 15 meters (50 ft) high. Something wrapped around their trap. Ingham and his crew decided they won't do anything violent. They'll sit and wait with cable engine ready.

After about 20 minutes, Ingham got a feeling that the ship was moving - like something was pulling it. He went to his cabin again to check navigation instruments. They confirmed his feeling. The ship was moving towards south at a constant speed of about one knot. When they passed about 500 meters, the thing that was pulling the rope, whatever it was, suddenly changed direction and headed for the shore. A bit later it suddenly turned again. Now Ingham was convinced that some kind of deep sea creature grabbed the trap
and pulled the trap along as it moved. Ingham touched the cable near surface of water. He says that he felt regular vibrations that traveled along the cable, like something walked on the ocean bottom, and vibrations were transferred along the cable. The impacts (vibrations) were always the same intensity and repeated themselves every few seconds. The 15-meter high silhouette, ship's movement, vibrations, traps he lost earlier - Ingham was convinced that he became the prey of a giant sea creature. Suddenly creature released the cable, so the crew easily pulled the trap out. Ingham looked at the chromascope - the silhouette was gone. The trap was all deformed and mostly damaged on the upper side. All of this clearly points to the Giant Bermudan Octopus. A creature which can keep the trap on the ocean bottom, resisting to the ship's engine power, the ocean depth on which event took place, location near Bermuda islands - octopus.

This is all rather concerning considering reports from the nearby Caribbean of "luscas". Supposedly these are sea monsters who are usually described as giant octopi. They live in the "blue holes" (underwater caves up to 200m deep) which would be indicative of octopi. Divers have reported seeing extremely large crustaceans in these blue holes which would also be indicative of a food source. On this page we have a story of a local describing luscas of only being dangerous if a boat is in water shallow enough for one tentacle to reach the sea floor and another to reach the boat. This is exactly the problem scientists have with kraken reports... a kraken could not be dangerous unless one tentacle could be supporting it on the sea floor. If that is a real conversation, that would be extremely compelling testimony suggesting a scientifically plausible large octopus posing a danger to the people of the Bahamas.

Unusual Dolphins

Your thinking: "Dolphins?? Surely these are one of the most studied and most understood marine life on Earth? There can't be anything unusual about dolphins!!". Well if that really was what you were thinking, you are wrong!

It's not Fraser's Dolphin, it's mine!

Take Fraser's dolphin (a recognised and fairly widespread species!!). The first known discovery linked to it was a skull found in Borneo in 1895. It went unstudied until Francis Fraser, in 1956, identified it as a new species. It was only in 1971 that a full body was found, after which sightings were first reported and then became more and more frequent. It's currently estimated there are over 100,000 Fraser's dolphins in pods numbering in the hundreds and the thousands. They grow to nearly 3 metres long. Why didn't we see them sooner?! Because they are a deep ocean species and no one probably ever bothered giving them a second look as they are a billion times more difficult to study than the more famous coastal dolphins. So it's quite likely that other species of dolphin are going about their business in the oceans without us even being aware of their existence. Perhaps one of these is the Rhinoceros Dolphin.

Online "artists impressions" show this dolphin to have a large "central" dorsal fin with a smaller one behind. But according to the books I've checked and he description of French naturalists Jean Quoy and Joseph Gaimard suggest the extra dorsal fin was actually smaller and towards the front which I think makes more sense vis-a-vis the name as well. (Sidenote: some "freak" common dolphins have been observed with a secondary dorsal fin towards their rear as per those pictures so I think the "artists" might just be getting very confused between the two different cryptid puzzles).

Quoy and Gaimard were off New South Wales in 1819 when they made their sighting of a pod of such dolphins which they described it's other features thus:

"The volume of the animal was about double that of the ordinary porpoise, and the the top of its body, as far as the dorsal fin, was spotted black and white."

They named it Delphinus rhinoceros. Other reports from the Atlantic and Mediterranean have also been made of this dolphin.

Another cryptid dolphin is a bit less far out to sea, but in no less a difficult place to study; it's the "Amazon Nessie". Writer Jeremy Wade photographed and described a dolphin he has spotted more than once in the Amazon river. Variously described as the "Ridge-backed Dolphin" and the "Sawtooth Dolphin" it is said to have low ridges on it's back instead of a dorsal fin. Whilst this might seem strange the Amazon River Dolphin does have a very short dorsal fin so it's not entirely unbelievable to imagine a close relative having evolved a ridge back approach. A very small photo can be found at the bottom right of this page and a description of Jeremy Wade's return to find it again can be found here. As I'm wasn't there, and the picture is very small, it would be rude of me to totally dismiss this but doesn't that picture look more crocodilian than mammalian?

The reports of unusual animals from the ocean are pretty much unlimited so expect to here more...

Further Reading

Rumours of Existence - Matthew A. Bille (UK Amazon, US Amazon) - Invaluable information of some of the more believable stories of unusual animals

This blogger works for nothing but the joy of writing but always appreciates things bought from his wishlist

Ghost Rockets: Sweden's Mini UFO Flap

Sometime early in 1946, strange objects began to appear in the skies above Sweden. It wasn't the first time this sort of thing had happened. During WWII neutral Sweden had been at the forefront of Allied research into Hitler's V weapons due to it's proximity to the research site at Peenemünde, and it's "luck" to be the crash site of several wrongly directed V2 rockets (timeline here). But in early 1946, the war had been over for more than six months. The Nazi's had long before abandoned their V2 research sites and they were now under new management (our old friends the Soviets). So where were these new aerial phenomena coming from?

The first reports of luminous fireballs and mysterious lights in the sky started to come in during February 1946. As the months went by the sightings became both more frequent and more descriptive.

Over the course of about a year over 2000 objects would be reported in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland. Most, like the picture below, would turn out to be mis-identifications of meteors and the like, but some remain unexplained.

Picture of a probable meteor taken by Erik Reuterswärd.

Some of the "rockets" were seen making "maneuvers" in the skying that would be impossible for a meteor. Others were described as slow moving cigar shaped objects which is a very common report in modern UFO reports and, of course, from the 19th century mystery airship flaps. "Crashes" were observed mainly into lakes, here's some examples taken from here:

1946 July 9. Lake Barken, Sweden

Object w/ blue & green flashing lights crashed into lake.

1946 July 10. Bjorkon, Sweden

Projectile trailing luminous smoke slammed into beach. Slaglike material. Cylinder 20-30m in dia. Military investigated.

1946 19 July, noon. Lake Kolmjarv, Sweden

Ghost rocket into lake.

1946 august 12. SW Sweden

Cigar shaped object, 5 ft. long trailing smoke landed on small uninhabited island.

1946 august 16 Malmo Sweden

Ghost rocket exploded breaking windows & dropping fragments.

1946 mid-October Southern Sweden

Small dart with wings & ball shaped tip exploded as it crashed into water.

1946 July 18. Lake Mjosa, Norway

2 - 8' long missiles with wings crashed into lake with notable turbulence.

These reports were taken very seriously by the Swedish military, especially given the emerging political order of the soon to start Cold War, and an investigation launched under the leadership of Swedish Air Force officer Karl-Gösta Bartoll.

Karl-Gösta Bartoll at Lake Kölmjärv on July 19, 1946 investigating "crash"

Searches were conducted for the remains of objects at crash sites and whilst some things were found, all were later put down to meteor debris. Gradually the sightings dropped off in Scandinavia and the investigation found nothing concrete although Bartoll always insisted what people were seeing was something "real".

Given the sensitivity of the events, the USA got involved and a rather interesting document exists from that time:



Further sightings were reported in other parts of Europe, mainly Greece but also in Belgium, Portugal and Italy.

So what were they? It's hardly likely that the Soviets had, within a year of the end of the Second World War, reestablished the V2 experiments and moved them on to the point of having the V2 rockets be maneuverable. It is also highly unlikely, given the situation at the time, that they'd risk an international incident by testing these over the northern European skies. I find it unlikely any other player on the international scene would get involved. Whilst the idea that these were alien spacecraft of some form is widespread, again I just don't see it. Why would they do something so distinctive from other UFO reports for just that year in just that place? Makes no sense.

Personally, based on the lack of physical evidence or witness testimony to the contrary, I believe these to be meteors and other natural phenomena reported by people already paranoid because of the world events unfolding before them, and no doubt some were embellished a little. The evidence for anything else is just so weak and scarce I can't see any other sensible explanation.

Sadly I think the ghost rockets were not as exciting as the name would suggest.

This blogger works for nothing but the joy of writing but always appreciates things bought from his wishlist