The Arizona Bigfoot – The Mogollon Monster

The Mogollon Monster  is a beast reported to live in  Arizona along the Mogollon Rim, but has been sighted in Prescott and  the Grand Canyon. It is most often described as a Bigfoot type creature. It is said to be bipedal ,covered in long black or brown hair, sometimes with red eyes, but the eyes are large and a hairless face, chest and hands.

Sightings go back to the early 1800’s when settlers of the area met up with the creature in the canyons and forests of the region. Local Native Americans in the region  told stories about big hairy men who lived within the forests and canyons. One legend told of a rival who stole a chief’s wife, so the chief commanded  the medicine man to  transform the rival  into this creature, which  still roams the area.

In a 1903 edition of The Arizona Republican,  I.W. Stevens reported seeing the creature near the Grand Canyon. His testimony stated “[It had] long white hair and matted beard that reached to his knees. It wore no clothing, and upon his talon-like fingers were claws at least two inches long.” He apparently got closer to it and reported, “Upon further inspection he noted ‘a coat of grey hair nearly covered his body, with here and there a spot of dirty skin showing.” He saw the creature drinking the blood from two felled cougars and when it spotted  him, it picked up a club and screamed at him.

Don Davis, who went on to become a cryptozoologist, saw the creature in the mid-1940s during a Boy Scout trip. He said, “The creature was huge. Its eyes were deep set and hard to see, but they seemed expressionless. His face seemed pretty much devoid of hair, but there seemed to be hair along the sides of his face. His chest, shoulders, and arms were massive, especially the upper arms; easily upwards of 6 inches in diameter, perhaps much, much more . I could see he was pretty hairy, but didn’t observe really how thick the body hair was. The face/head was very square; square sides and squared up chin, like a box.”

The White Mountain Apache Nation, have had encounters as well. In 2006, Collette Altaha said, “We’re not prone to easily talk to outsiders, but there have been more sightings than ever before. It cannot be ignored any longer.”

 Marjorie Grimes, a resident of nearby Whiteriver, said she had seen it and described it as: ‘All black and  tall. The way it walked; it was taking big strides. I put on the brakes and raced back and looked between the two trees where it was, and it was gone!’

Tribal police lieutenant Ray Burnette said, “A couple of times they’ve seen this creature looking through the windows. They’re scared when they call. The calls we’re getting from people – they weren’t hallucinating, they weren’t drunks, they weren’t people that we know can make hoax calls. They’re from real citizens of the Fort Apache Indian Reservation.”

A more recent sighting was reported in 2014. A 28-year-old woman, Y. Estevez, a sociology student ,believes she came across an unidentified animal while hiking the Canyon Point trail in the region of the Mogollon Rim. She was alone and described it as looking like a troll and it was drinking from a pool of water.

So myth or monster? Until definite proof is uncovered   the jury is out.         

Carlingford Lough Creature

Carlingford Lough Monster.

The lough  is 10 miles (16 km) long and 2–4 miles wide. The towns on the lough shores include  Rosstrevor, Carlingford, and the port of Greenore. The name is derived from the Old Norse Kerlingfjǫrðr, which means "narrow sea-inlet of the hag" . It is a glacial fjord or sea inlet that forms part of the border between Northern Ireland  and the Republic of Ireland.

Irish folklore tells of mythological serpent like creatures known as horse eels in the Carlingford Lough region. Foy mountain above Carlingford is said to be the last home of little people or leprechauns . So a place of myths and legends .

The Horse Eels may be more than myth according to this recent article:

Ireland's Loch Ness Monster 'exists' as residents at Carlingford Lough claim they see majestic creatures

Exclusive: These strange sea creatures are described as having a horse-like head with a very elongated eel shaped body

Ireland's Loch Ness Monster exists and lurks beneath the oceans and lakes, according to a top sea serpent hunter.Horse-eels are mythical aquatic beasts and have been regularly sighted by locals at Lough Nahooin and Lough Fadda in Connemara, Co Galway.These strange sea creatures are described as having a horse-like head with a very elongated eel shaped body and have been tipped as Ireland’s answer to the Scottish legend.Now residents at Carlingford Lough claim they’ve seen the majestic creatures and have enlisted the help of renowned naturalist Adrian Shine to help detect the presence of the sea- serpents.The irelands famous scientist has spent over 50 years studying what lurks beneath and has dedicated a life’s work to uncover whether the Loch Ness Monster exists.

Read rest here : https://www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/ -loch-ness-monster-exists-16185056

There are other loughs which claim to have monsters :

http://cryptozoo-oscity.blogspot.com/2010/01/lough-fadda-horse-eel.html

https://cryptozoo-oscity.blogspot.com/2009/04/irish-lake-monsters.html

However Moray Eels have been seen in the waters around Ireland so could this be what has been seen? Some can grow to a large size. See article:https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/second-sighting-of-deadly-moray-eel-in-irish-waters-is-alarming-says-expert-35815141.html

I would love it to be a real Horse Eel but quite often the answer is mis-identification or not recognising a known animal.

Ebu Gogo, hobbit, ape or myth?

Reposting of an article from 2009 by request.

Monday, 5 October 2009

Ebu Gogo, hobbit, ape or myth?

Ebu Gogo is a small hairy human-like creature from the mythology of the people of the island of Flores, Indonesia.. They are said to be about one metre tall, their grapefruit-sized head covered in hair, pot-bellied, and with ears that stick out. The name translates as some thing like “thing that eats everything”.

The people of Flores believe that the Ebu Gogo were alive at the time of the arrival of Portuguese trading ships in the 17th century, and some hold that they still survive but are rarely seen.

So could these little people be the hobbit “Homo floresiensis” whose bones were discovered by scientists in a cave on the island? Could their descendants still be alive ?

The following article Source: Daily Telegraph Date: 28 October 2004

Richard Roberts, discoverer of the Hobbit, says local tales suggest the species could still exist. When I was back in Flores earlier this month we heard the most amazing tales of little, hairy people, whom they called Ebu Gogo - Ebu meaning grandmother and Gogo meaning 'he who eats anything'. The tales contained the most fabulous details - so detailed that you'd imagine there had to be a grain of truth in them. One of the village elders told us that the Ebu Gogo ate everything raw, including vegetables, fruits, meat and, if they got the chance, even human meat. When food was served to them they also ate the plates, made of pumpkin - the original guests from hell . The villagers say that the Ebu Gogo raided their crops, which they tolerated, but decided to chase them away when the Ebu Gogo stole - and ate - one of their babies. They ran away with the baby to their cave which was at the foot of the local volcano, some tens of metres up a cliff face. The villagers offered them bales of dry grass as fodder, which they gratefully accepted. A few days later, the villagers went back with a burning bale of grass which they tossed into the cave. Out ran the Ebu Gogo, singed but not fried, and were last seen heading west, in the direction of Liang Bua, where we found the Hobbit, as it happens.

When my colleague Gert van den Bergh first heard these stories a decade ago, which several of the villages around the volcano recount with only very minor changes in detail, he thought them no better than leprechaun tales until we unearthed the Hobbit. (I much prefer Ebu as the name of our find but my colleague Mike Morwood was insistent on Hobbit.).The anatomical details in the legends are equally fascinating. They are described as about a metre tall, with long hair, pot bellies, ears that slightly stick out, a slightly awkward gait, and longish arms and fingers - both confirmed by our further finds this year. They [the Ebu Gogo] murmured at each other and could repeat words [spoken by villagers] verbatim. For example, to 'here's some food', they would reply 'here's some food'. They could climb slender-girthed trees but, here's the rub, were never seen holding stone tools or anything similar, whereas we have lots of sophisticated artefacts in the H. floresiensis levels at Liang Bua. That's the only inconsistency with the Liang Bua evidence. The women Ebu Gogo had extremely pendulous breasts, so long that they would throw them over their shoulders, which must have been quite a sight in full flight. We did ask the villagers if they ever interbred with the Ebu Gogo. They vigorously denied this, but said that the women of Labuan Baju (a village at the far western end of Flores, better known as LBJ) had rather long breasts, so they must have done. Poor LBJ must be the butt of jokes in Flores, rather like the Irish and Tasmanians.

A local eruption at Liang Bua (in western Flores) may have wiped out local hobbits around 12,000 years ago, but they could well have persisted much later in other parts of the island. The villagers said that the last hobbit was seen just before the village moved location, farther from the volcano, not long before the Dutch colonists settled in that part of central Flores, in the 19th century. Do the Ebu Gogo still exist? It would be a hoot to search the last pockets of rainforest on the island. Not many such pockets exist, but who knows. At the very least, searching again for that lava cave, or others like it, should be done, because remains of hair only a few hundred years old, would surely survive, snagged on the cave walls or incorporated in deposits, and would be ideal for ancient DNA analyses. Interestingly, we did find lumps of dirt with black hair in them this year in the Hobbit levels, but don't know yet if they're human or something else. We're getting DNA testing done, which we hope will be instructive.

Richard "Bert" Roberts is a University of Wollongong professor and one of the team investigating the Hobbits.

There is also this extract from a larger article also 2004:

Chief Epiradus Dhoi Lewa has a strange tale to tell. Sitting in his bamboo and wooden home at the foot of an active volcano on the remote Indonesian island of Flores, he recalls how people from his village were able to capture a tiny woman with long, pendulous breasts three weeks ago. "They said she was very little and very pretty," he says, holding his hand at waist height. "Some people saw her very close up." The villagers of Boawae believe the strange woman came down from a cave on the steaming mountain where short, hairy people they call Ebu Gogo lived long ago."Maybe some Ebu Gogo are still there," the 70-year-old chief told the Herald through an interpreter in Boawae last week.The locals' descriptions of Ebu Gogo as about a metre tall, with pot bellies and long arms match the features of a new species of human "hobbits" whose bones were recently unearthed by Australian and Indonesian researchers in a different part of Flores in a cave known as Liang Bua. The unexpected discovery of this tiny Homo floresiensis, who existed until at least 12,000 years ago at Liang Bua, before being apparently wiped out by a volcanic eruption, was hailed as one of the most important archaeological finds in decades when it was announced in October. The chief adds that the mysterious little woman in Boawae somehow "escaped" her captors, and the local police said they knew nothing of her existence when he quizzed them. Source:http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/12/05/1102182161157.html

Interesting isn’t it? Could the chief be trying to attract more researchers or even tourists to the area or do they genuinely believe the Ebu Gogo still exist on the island. If they still exist what a find that would be for crypto zoology and science. A question that occurs to me is could they also have existed in other places in the world and could the orang pendek be a relative?

The sea serpent in Orkney Waters

Orkney Sea monsters. The north of Scotland has many tales of sea serpents from around the islands especially so the Orkney Islands and Scarpa Flow. On a summer day, in the 1850s, a young boy, Alec Groundwater, was spending a  day by the shore in Orphir. The sea was flat calm and young Alec was sitting on a rock, looking out over Scapa Flow, his legs dangling out over the water. Not too  distance from where the boy was sitting , the water began to surge  and a strange beast rose from the depths. The boy's description of the beast was vague, but he described a broad, flat head with a wide mouth that contained some large  teeth, and had a long mane, similar to that of a horse.The creature stared  at the boy , with "cold baleful eyes", before rearing up from the sea and trying  to seize the his dangling legs. The boy stood up frozen  in terror as the monster  made a number of attempts to reach him.When at last it gave up, it plunged beneath the sea, where it: "rose once more to shake its head and mane till the water cascaded from it on all sides, then disappeared." In 1905 an article appeared in the local paper:

The sea serpent in Orkney
Seen by two fishermen - off the "douch"
From The Orcadian, November 11, 1905

The sea serpent has again made its appearance, and at present it is enjoying itself in the boisterous waters of the String, with a tendency to sun itself near Shapinsay, quite close to the .rocks under Balfour Castle.Last Saturday two fishermen were working their creels off the "Douch" when the monster suddenly raised itself out of the water at the side of their boat.

The visit was so sudden and unexpected that the men cannot give a very particular description of the monster. Of one thing they are certain, however, and that is that the serpent had an awe-inspiring appearance, and was quite different from anything they had ever seen before.The body is described as massive as that of horse, covered with a scaly surface, and spotted. It was the eyes of the monster, however, that attracted most attention. These are said to have been as large as a bowl, and had a most fascinating attraction for the beholder.After gazing at the occupants of the boat for a second or two the uncanny visitant, gradually sank out of view, much to the relief of the fishermen. The same men, when fishing near the same place on Wednesday last, had another glimpse of the sea serpent..

It is needless to add that the reported visit of the far-famed monster to Shapinsay has caused somewhat of a sensation, and arguments are rife and strong as to what it can be.The more superstitiously inclined lean to the belief it is the sea serpent; but more level-headed people are of opinion that it is nothing more than an extra large seal, attracted to the vicinity by large numbers of sillocks which are at present swarming around Elwick Bay.

Who knows? Some day a more than ordinarily plucky fisherman may succeed in laying a drop of salt on the tail of the real sea serpent. Maybe a Shapinsay man. There are no more plucky men in Orkney.

It would be dismissed by most as mistaken identity and so forth if it were not for many other sightings reported over the years.

In August 1919, five men fishing off Brims, in Hoy, encountered another  creature.. The boat, carrying the men, was  between the headlands of Brimsness and Torness, when the long-necked monster appeared .It  was described as having a neck "as thick as an elephant's foreleg". On top of the neck was a head that, "very much smaller in proportion".

Speaking to The Orcadian newspaper at the time, one man reported :

"The neck I should say stuck about five to six feet, possibly more, out of the water. My friends thought it (the creature) would weigh two or three tons, some thinking four to six, If the neck stretched say to eight feet the neck and body would be eighteen to twenty feet long."

(Some speculated that a colony of monsters were living in caves beneath the islands after this sighting)

Mr John R. Brown, a lightkeeper on the Pentland Skerries, sighted another massive sea creature in August 1937. Mr Brown stressed his sighting was definitely not a killer whale.

A few weeks before this  Pentland Skerries sighting, workmen on the Fair Isle reported seeing a large creature  approach them. Alarmed for the safety of a colleague in the water, the  men were about to signal or him to return when the creature "sheared off" to deeper water. It remained some distance from the shore, where the witnesses observed it swimming for most of the afternoon.

That same month, the author of The Orcadian’s nature notes, James Marwick, reported an another  sighting from Rousay.

“It was in the sea about 200 yards off the shore, straight opposite Nethermill, Sourin. Two friends, along with my brother, saw it also. My brother, a friend and I first had a good look with the spyglass at it. All we could see was a big head, with long ears and very long neck. We were not satisfied with that so my brother and I launched a boat and went off to get a better look.

“As we came near, it turned round, head-on towards us about 12 or 14 feet away.“This is what we saw: A big round head with small black eyes, big drooping ears, long tapered neck and a very heavy-looking thick body, altogether about nine or ten feet long; slate grey in colour and smooth-skinned like a porpoise.”

I came across this but was unable to find confirmation:

    Many years later, a diver reported descending to investigate a sunken German ship, only to realise he was standing on the back of a large sea monster that had made its home in the wreck.
     Divers flock to Orkney for the Scapa Flow wrecks .

All the reports have similarities but I suspect the 1850’s sighting by the boy was a walrus. Walruses have been known to make the occasional appearance in the area. That would not explain the long necked sightings however. The fishermen and the nature reporter would know what walruses, dolphins, killer whales ,seals etc looked like so would not mistake the creature for them. So what was visiting the waters around  the Orkney Islands with  a long neck?

Wolpertinger ,legendary or real?

A wolpertinger (also called wolperdinger or woiperdinger) is a legendary hybrid animal which  inhabits the alpine forests of Bavaria in Germany.

 The most common  description portrays the Wolpertinger as having the head of a rabbit, the body of a squirrel, the antlers of a deer, and the wings and occasionally the legs of a pheasant. Sometimes the feet are webbed like a duck. It  is known from woodcarvings dating back to the 17th Century. The Brothers Grimm mention the creature in one of their books.

The name is thought to have originated in a town called Wolterdingen, which is famous for making shot glasses in the form of various animals and calling them wolterdinger. Bavarians view these creatures as being mischievous not malicious. The belief in their existence is till strong.

It looks like a small monster but it is in fact quite shy and not normally aggressive. Usually its  only seen at the full moon. In order to catch one ,one must first persuade a beautiful young maiden to come with the hunter and expose her breasts to attract the Wolpertinger. It will be apparently transfixed and easily caught. There are stuffed Wolpertingers in museums in Bavaria supposedly caught in this manner. There is one on display in the Deutsches Jagd-und Fischereimuseum (German Hunting and Fishing Museum).

( I think the hunters were pulling a fast one and that young women these days would be less reluctant to follow a hunter into the woods and do the same.)

Another way to catch one is to put salt on its tail. What effect this has is not documented but salt is used to protect from evil so perhaps its stops it running away.

There are no recent recorded sightings despite the tales going back generations but maybe people do not report seeing them anymore.

One theory put forward is that the creatures are deformed rabbits that  have contracted a virus. Local people would surely know what a rabbit looks like ,even a diseased one?

It will be just another legend like the Jackaloupe, unless someone photographs one or catches one. Until then it remains a myth ,a story, to amuse the tourists.

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The Iliamna Lake Monster Latest.

Search renewed for Iliamna Lake’s ‘monster’ with DNA testing and underwater video

By Casey Grove, Alaska Public Media – Anchorage

If there really is a lake monster in Alaska’s largest lake, a group of researchers using cutting edge technology this summer might have the best chance yet of finding it. People around Iliamna Lake have reported seeing the creature – only in quick glimpses – since the late 1940s. But there’s never been proof of what exactly it is. Now, a team has plans to sift through DNA in the lake and drop a camera down to its deepest spots, a thousand feet down, in an attempt to solve the decades-old mystery. The group of researchers includes camera specialist Charlotte Levy [lee-vee], who, by day, is assistant director of Natural Resources at the Aleutians East Borough. Levy told Alaska Public Media’s Casey that people who’ve reported seeing the monster tend to have a similar story.

Read it here :https://www.alaskapublic.org/2019/05/08/search-renewed-for-iliamna-lakes-monster-with-dna-testing-and-underwater-video/

The Iliamna Lake Monster:

Lake Iliamna is the largest lake in Alaska and the second largest freshwater lake within the U.S.A. Proportions are , 80 miles (129 km) long and 25 miles(40 km) wide with an area of 1,000 sq mi (2,600 sq km). The Iliamna Volcano, 10,016 ft (3,053 m) high, lies northeast of the lake and is still active.The lake was named by Tanaina Indians, whose mythology held that it was inhabited by a giant blackfish capable of biting holes in canoes. Lake Iliamna is still an isolated body of water, its shores largely unpopulated. The largest village, Kakhonak, counts only 200 permanent residents. The lake cannot be reached overland. Summer visitors must come by boat or fly in to a single airstrip.

Reports of a monster in Lake Iliamna go back to the Aleut and other indigenous tribes. The Aleuts did not hunt the lake's creatures as they believed them to be dangerous. Some early white settlers and visitors reportedly saw the things, too, but the stories only took off in the 1940s, when pilots began spotting monsters from the air. The flyers' descriptions generally matched the native tales. The lake's creatures were usually described as long, almost slender animals, like fish or whales, up to 30 feet in length. 

Read rest here: https://cryptozoo-oscity.blogspot.com/2009/05/alaskan-lake-monster.html

Good Luck, lets hope they find some answers.

Evolving Cryptids ?

Cryptids and evolution.

I have often speculated that crpytids could only be relic survivors from ancient times if they evolved hugely in order to survive. In prehistoric times oxygen levels were higher, the seas were shallower, clear and warmer etc. So in order to be alive in any form in modern times they would have to adapt to polluted air and colder darker polluted seas.I came across the article below in which small fish had evolved to withstand high levels of pollution in the Houston Ship Channel.

A small fish somehow evolved resistance to the heavily polluted water of the Houston Ship Channel by mysteriously acquiring genes from another fish from thousands of miles away, according to a new paper.The Houston Ship Channel’s filthy water is the result of 60 years of industrial dumping, contaminating the water out into Galveston Bay. But despite the grime, a population of Gulf killifish have managed to evolve resistance to the otherwise lethal pollution. Genetic sequences revealed that the fish have integrated a small bit of DNA from another species of fish, the Atlantic killifish. These results show the extreme luck and difficulty required for animals to adapt to environments changed quickly by humans.

But the incredible realization of how this fish evolved its pollution resistance came from genetic testing. A pair genes from the pollutant-resistant Gulf killifish, including a segment with deleted DNA that seemed to account for the resistance, appeared to come directly from another species, the Atlantic killifish. The mystery, now, is how the fish managed to make it from the Atlantic coast to the Gulf of Mexico. “We can only speculate,” said Whitehead. “It was almost certainly human assisted. These fish aren’t capable of swimming around the straits of Florida.” Perhaps an Atlantic killifish was scooped up in a ship’s ballast water and dumped into Galveston Bay.

Read full article here: https://gizmodo.com/this-fish-has-evolved-to-thrive-in-intensely-polluted-w-1834473178

However it happened in 34 generations the fish had evolved to cope with high pollution levels. If the fish could do it then so could other creatures. Perhaps an ice age creature mated with a more modern creature to produce a hybrid that could survive in polluted seas etc. It could explain some lake monsters surviving in lakes formed during the ice age. A sea creature trapped in a newly formed lake which then  mated with a fresh water creature and evolving into a hybrid that could be surviving today. Nessie could be a hybrid of a seal and a sturgeon! That would be one for the books! Seriously  though it could be the answer to how something could still be surviving hundreds of years after it supposedly went extinct .An interesting theory for you to ponder. Please feel free to comment.

n.b. comments are externally moderated so may  make take a few hours to appear.