Monsters and Myths

If you think Bigfoot is a hoax, you’re not alone. In 2003, the Seattle Post Intelligencer and the New York Times fingered deceased Washington state prankster Ray Wallace as the perpetrator of a decades-long Bigfoot sham; his family claimed he created the Sasquatch legend with suits and fake footprints. More recently, in August 2008 a news-making Bigfoot corpse in Georgia was revealed to be a gussied-up Halloween costume ordered on the Internet.

But those reports haven’t stopped people like Matt Moneymaker, president of the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, from seeking the big, hairy truth. He’s led scores of people on $300 four-day Bigfoot treks to North America’s mountain ranges, home (in his estimation) to 10,000 Sasquatches. He dismisses the claim that Wallace invented Bigfoot, and notes that Sasquatch sightings occurred hundreds of years before Wallace was even born. What’s more, he knows from firsthand experience that Bigfoot is real.

“We’ve proven it over and over and over again,” Moneymaker says. “I’ve taken hundreds of people out on expeditions and many people have had encounters during those expeditions. We prove it every month to people who are willing to go out and experience it.”

Bigfoot is just one of dozens of mysterious creatures that may roam the world. Believers argue that while these so-called cryptids have not yet been catalogued by science, they most certainly exist. Out in the wilds of the world, creatures like Orang Pendek in Sumatra (a diminutive ape/human hybrid), Mokele-mbembe in the Republic of Congo (a living dinosaur) and Phaya Naga in the Mekong River (a fire-breathing snakelike creature) are lurking.

As the host of the SciFi Channel’s “Destination Truth”, Joshua Gates investigates reports of unexplained creatures in remote corners of the world. While the show rarely ends with definitive proof that any particular cryptid exists, he and his team have unearthed convincing proof of some creatures—most notably a Yeti footprint found in Nepal. Gates describes himself as an “open-minded skeptic” who holds out for the possibility that cryptids may be hiding out there.

“There is a real sense that there are mysteries that have not been solved in places like the Amazon and elsewhere,” Gates says. “And that’s borne out by how every year, they are cataloging not just new plants and new fungi … they’re actually cataloging new vertebrates.”

Despite ubiquitous GPS systems and Google maps, broad swaths of the world remain uncharted, perhaps allowing cryptids to go undetected. But, partly thanks to technology, this is a boom time for cryptozoology, the study of mysterious creatures. Websites like cryptomundo.com (run by famed cryptozoologist Loren Coleman) and Moneymaker’s BFRO.net are read by international audiences willing to explore where strange animals are spotted. Adherents believe that with a global network of searchers, proof of the existence of mysterious creatures can come soon.

Modern cameras may also help snag sightings of elusive prey. One Japanese expedition is using cutting-edge motion detection cameras (and sponsorship money from Japanese brewery Suntory and electronics company Nikon) to look for Nepal’s Yeti, aka the Abominable Snowman (or, Bigfoot’s snowbound cousin). Likewise, the Orang Pedenk Project in Indonesia hopes to use heat- and motion-sensitive cameras to capture photos of the small apelike creatures that walk like men.

The most famous cryptids, like Bigfoot, are popular among curious travelers. In fact, according to a recent British poll, Scotland’s Loch Ness is the most popular tourist destination in the United Kingdom, no doubt thanks to its most famous possible resident, the Loch Ness Monster. While Nessie is notoriously bashful, area attractions like the Loch Ness Research Center draw hundreds of visitors every year.

Less savory beasts also attract fans. When the Chupacabra was first reported in Puerto Rico in the 1990s, enterprising locals organized island tours to look for this creature that reportedly sucks blood from animals. “It is taken seriously, but it’s more of a joke than anything,” Puerto Rico Tourism Company spokesperson Mari Jo Laborde says. “Every once in a while there’s an appearance that makes the newspaper, like a story about the Chupacabra showing up somewhere. But it’s more of a folktale than something people fear.” As sightings in Puerto Rico have died down, the Chupacabra has spread to other countries, most recently in the American Southwest.

While Bigfoot, Nessie and Chupacabra are notoriously elusive, they are arguably the most accessible cryptids. Travelers searching for encounters with other creatures need to set out into wilder terrain, like Papua New Guinea, where the mysterious winged Ropen has been reported, or the Amazon, purported home of the giant anaconda and one-eyed sloth creature call the Mapinguary.

“In general, these stories have more life in cultures that are still developing,” Gates says. “What happens is the more industrialized and modernized and integrated with the world, the more these stories tend to slip away.”

msnbc.msn.com/id/27183341/

An unidentified flying object has been photographed over Filton.

Taxi driver Paul Matthews spotted the object in the air near the Royal Mail depot on 2pm on Friday afternoon soon after he had driven into the Airbus site.

He quickly pulled over his car and watched as what he described as a disc-shaped object hovered in the air before disappearing as swiftly as it had appeared.

Now the Bristol Evening Post is calling on readers who believe they know what the object is to get in touch.

Mr Matthews said that at first he thought it was an aeroplane, microlite or parachute, but it wasn’t behaving like anything he had seen before.

“It was very weird. It was so strange. I have been a lorry driver in my time and seen some strange things, but this is something else,” said Mr Matthews, 45, from Patchway.

“I had never ever seen something like this before. I was really surprised how other people had not noticed it. I thought they would be stopping in their droves, but that was not the case at all.”

Denis Plunkett of Winterbourne, who runs the British Flying Saucer Bureau, believed Mr Matthews’ sighting was just the latest in a series of visits by aliens to Earth.

Mr Plunkett said: “They come in all shapes and sizes, mainly disc-shaped but in the upper atmosphere also cigar-shaped – the so-called motherships.

“When they get in the upper atmosphere, they discharge the smaller ones that are used for surveillance.

“We have had quite a few UFO sightings in the last few months, in Cardiff for example when one almost crashed into a police helicopter.

“Before that, it was seen over Kingswood and the Suspension Bridge before heading to Wales.”

Former RAF pilot Mr Plunkett, 77, added: “I’m not surprised this UFO was spotted over somewhere like Patchway because quite often they visit airports like Filton. They visit anything to do with the air because they want to know the infrastructure of the planet. What they are obviously doing is surveying and collecting information about us.”

thisisbristol.co.uk/news/UFO-photographed-Patchway/

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Maybe it was bad light or bad mushrooms. Maybe it was someone in a stitched-up bear skin creeping up on the bonfire to scare the wits out of his brother. Or maybe it really was a rare primate that wandered near camp in the dark several thousand years ago that caught someone’s eye.

However it happened, Sasquatch was hatched into the human consciousness, long, long ago.

But Bigfoot strode into the picture just 50 years ago this month. Born in the pages of the Humboldt Times by columnist Andrew Genzoli, the word Bigfoot was to become the new operating title for the hairy beast of lore.

In Bluff Creek off the Klamath River this month in 1958, Jerry Crew and his road construction crew found tracks of a Sasquatch, the story goes. Crew made a plaster cast of the impressions, and brought them into the Times on Oct. 4.

Genzoli recorded that the men called the creature Big Foot.

”There is a mystery in the mountains of northeastern Humboldt County, waiting for a solution … Who is making the huge 16-inch tracks in the vicinity of Bluff Creek?” Genzoli wrote in the front page story below a classic photo of Crew with a plaster cast of the big foot. “Are the tracks a human hoax? Or, are they actual marks of a huge but harmless wild-man, traveling through the wilderness? Can this be some legendary sized animal?”

It’s difficult to know how seriously Genzoli took the story, and he raises some questions about the claim and introduces skeptics to balance the piece.

Then things started getting weird. A $1,000 reward was offered to anyone who could explain the mystery, which was, proclaimed the Times’ sister paper the Humboldt Standard, either a hoax or “a mentally deficient, over-grown boy gone wild.”

Only 10 days later, it was Times reporter Bill Chambers on the case. Chambers reported that the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office was convinced they had the man responsible for the footprints in Bluff Creek, and that he would confess.

But when construction worker Ray Wallace — the supposed hoaxer — was contacted by the Times about the allegations, he reacted angrily.

”I’m not going in. If they want to put out a warrant I’m going to sue them for slander — and I won’t fool around about it!” Wallace said. “If they think they’re going to make a laughing stock out of me, they’ve got another thing coming.”

Wallace’s brother W.R. “Shorty” Wallace insisted that no one would work all day in the Bluff Creek country and then run around planting footprints.

The Oct. 15 Times edition featured a huge photo spread, with Chambers reporting that “Bigfoot has been seen.” Two construction workers had seen a Sasquatch and told him all about it. The Standard on Oct. 16 said the witnesses were, “Two husky construction workers with good eyesight,” in an effort to eliminate doubt.

Now look, anyone who’s ever been the victim of a good hoax knows just how seriously it can be taken by its perpetrators. Things take on an overblown quality. Characters involved in successful hoaxes play different roles to satisfy the victim or victims who take different approaches to interpreting a mystery.

Shorty Wallace’s explanation that no one would stomp around making footprints after work is obvious bunk in hindsight. His role likely was to instill doubt. Ray Wallace’s vehement denial of the allegation — even threatening to go to the courts — was likely meant to make him the untouchable martyr.

The husky construction workers with good eyesight were probably enlisted to play the role of true believers. Jerry Crew provided the ever-important introduction of evidence, to get the ball rolling and feel out initial reactions.

We now know the whole thing was a hoax — or a brash attempt to claim credit for one. Late in 2002, Ray Wallace died at the age of 84 in Washington. But he didn’t take Bigfoot to the grave with him; he had spilled his guts to a few members of his family. The man who insisted he’d “sue the  for slander” had confessed to being the original Bigfoot hoaxer, his son and nephew told the Seattle Times.

What was surprising was what the Times-Standard — that descendant of the original Bigfoot newspapers — learned upon news of Wallace’s death. The Times-Standard called June Beal, wife of deceased Times editor L.W. “Scoop” Beal, to find out if she knew anything about it. June Beal was a perpetually pleasant person who until shortly before her death in July 2007 visited the newsroom regularly to chat.

June Beal told the Times-Standard that she’d been mum on the topic for nearly five decades, even as she watched it spiral out of control. Finally, with Wallace’s death, she was willing to share her secret.

”They were in on this hoax,” June Beal said of her husband and Wallace. “It was just a fun thing and the fun got out of hand.”

It certainly explains Chambers’ almost complete lack of skepticism in his reporting at the time. It also shows how newspapers — especially at the time — had an incredible influence on events, as Bigfoot became infused into the minds of the adventurous, the scared and the gullible.

Bigfoot made a massive resurgence when Roger Patterson supposedly filmed a Bigfoot near Bluff Creek in 1967. That footage is still some of the most relied on for both skeptics and believers regarding the existence of Sasquatch.

To be sure, the Sasquatch and the wild man have long been a part of myth and legend. And as Idaho State University researcher Jeff Meldrum — a primary advocate of the existence of the man-beast — said, not all the footprints cast in plaster over the years could possibly have been hoaxes.

This goes back to the rule for misinformation and general trickery: Just because you made it up, doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
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It wasn’t until 1803 that a majority of scientists were forced to accept the existence of meteors. Until then, stories of stones falling from the sky were widely ridiculed as tall tales by the ignorant and impressionable.

Could Bigfoot be another example?

A hulking hair-covered figure, initially thought to have been a prankster in a gorilla suit, is spotted by scores of people near Bennington. If you think we are referring to the now famous case of the Bennington “Monster” in the fall of 2003, you would be mistaken. It’s actually a series of sightings from 1861. That’s right, 142 years earlier, during August, a gorilla-man scare swept through southern Vermont as hunting parties were formed to track it down. Several residents reportedly shot at the creature, but it managed to elude its pursuers as if it had supernatural abilities. No zoo animals were reported missing and no body was ever found. Rumors circulated that the beast was a college student in a suit. If it was, he was taking an enormous risk by continuing the escapade even after being shot at.

A similar series of sightings occurred near Glastenbury Mountain in the autumn of 2003, when Ray Dufresne reported seeing a huge hairy creature lumbering into the woods while he was driving on Route 7. His first thought was that it was someone in a gorilla costume. He estimated the weight at 270 pounds. Other witnesses soon came forward with descriptions of a similar creature in the area. Again, if it was a man in a suit, he was taking a big risk. The parallels between these two cases, separated by nearly a century and a half, are eerily similar.

Indian lore, early pioneers

Readers may be surprised to learn Vermonters have a long history of sighting large, hairy human-like monsters. In his book “The First Vermonters,” former University of Vermont anthropologist William Haviland observes that the Abenaki recounted stories of “The Forest Wanderer,” a giant humanoid creature that occasionally left footprints behind. These accounts parallel Algonquin tales of the windigo or “giant cannibalistic man.” The windigo legend of hulking, hairy man-beasts can be found throughout New England in all Algonquian-speaking people. According to one modern-day Native American description of the windigo, it is “a giant thing, swift … and covered with hair, and has eyes like two pools of blood. And there’s this smell, like rotting meat.” This description is similar to Bigfoot reports today.

During the latter 18th and early 19th centuries, European settlers in what is now northern Vermont heard tales of “Slippry Skin,” an extraordinarily large bear that always walked on two legs. Tales of this Bigfoot-like creature figured prominently in many oral and written traditions of the region, especially Essex and Orleans Counties. As early as the 1750s, a scout for Roger’s Rangers wrote that Native Americans of the region were known to have described this legendary creature as “Wet Skin.” Also referred to as “slippryskin” and “Old Slippry Skin,” his nickname was apparently given on account of its remarkable ability to elude hunters. In her book, “History of Lemington,” Vermont historian Marion Daley writes that the creature moved about in a swift, ghost-like fashion that bordered on the supernatural. “Before a hunter could lay his gunsights on him, the old bear would vanish into the woods silent and swift as a drift of smoke.”

The creature was described as an extraordinarily large bear that always walked on two legs. Slippryskin was more mischievous than malevolent and routinely teased the inhabitants of the Essex county towns of Lemington, Victory and Maidstone, and was credited with ripping up gardens, pulling down fences, stampeding cattle and trampling cornfields. Its calling card: a trail of huge prints in the snow and mud. “Wet Skin” was said to have been especially adept at throwing hunters off its trail. Historian Paul Rayno recounts the story of a party of hunters who left the town of Morgan in Orleans County, with the intention of killing the creature. As they were walking along a logging road leading to the top of Elon Mountain, a loud thumping noise could be heard from above. The men quickly hid in some nearby bushes in expectation of ambushing Slippryskin. The creature backtracked on his prints, then rolled a large tree down the mountainside, narrowly missing the hunters as they were lying in wait. Shaken, the hunters promptly abandoned the chase — or so the story goes.

Modern-day accounts

Similar accounts of Bigfoot-like creatures abound in Vermont today. For instance, in 1983, a middle-aged Vermont couple reported an extraordinary encounter while on a leisurely drive in rural Tinmouth. The husband noticed a giant human-like figure walking swiftly along a rocky ridge. He said, “The man was very nimble. I couldn’t believe how quickly he was moving among the rocks toward the high point on the ridge … My wife and I were suddenly stunned when he stopped and turned facing us. His arms were much longer than a normal man’s and he appeared to be much bigger — especially taller — than any man either of us had ever seen.” The man was so moved by what he saw that he wrote a letter to the late Castleton State College anthropologist Warren Cook. He told Cook that at first he tried to rationalize away what he was seeing as a prankster in a suit, but quickly ruled it out after what happened next. “Suddenly he raised his giant arms above his head and waved them several times … (then) turned and continued along the ridge with the agility of a gymnast. I was convinced that this was no ordinary man.” The sighting lasted for several minutes before the figure disappeared over the ridge.

In October 1986, three Castleton State College students were traveling on Route 4A on their way to West Rutland when their vehicle nearly struck a huge creature on the roadside. Everyone saw the figure which stood 6-1/2 to 7 feet tall. After the driver, Kerry Bilda, swerved to avoid hitting it, the trio looked back to see the creature still walking west. By the time they had turned around and went back, it was gone. A passenger, John Bradt said if his window had been down, it was close enough to reach out and touch. He said the body was covered in collie-length hair, but the face itself was nearly hairless. It had deep-set eyes, high cheekbones and a white skin tone. The trio also made a curious observation that is common in Bigfoot reports: The creature seemed oblivious to them and didn’t flinch or attempt to get out of the way of their car. The encounter happened just 100 yards from an incident that was reported the previous year, almost to the day.

A more recent sighting occurred on the evening of Oct. 8, 2005, when a father was “moose spotting” with his two daughters near Ludlow. Suddenly, a huge creature crossed the road 50 feet in front of their vehicle. He said it was about 8 feet tall, covered with hair, and crossed the road in only two strides. It had a cone-shaped head, a heavy build and was “covered in short dark hair.” The arms had a pronounced swing as it moved, and the hand that was visible was massive.

When it comes to assessing whether Bigfoot exists, one is faced with the lack of physical evidence: a body, fossils and bones. Somehow, it always manages to elude capture. On the other hand, perhaps an even more important questions is: Are there precedents in nature? There are many remarkable examples of adaptations enabling creatures to survive. Chameleons change color to blend with their surroundings and become seemingly invisible. The peregrine falcon can spot small animals up to 5 miles away. Most incredible of all is the sooty tern. This small bird can stay aloft for more than three years without landing and sleeps while flying. Is it too far-fetched to think Bigfoot could have evolved unique mechanisms that allow it to elude humans?

In recent years, over two dozen Bigfoot organizations have even been formed across the country in hopes of proving the creature’s existence. New England groups include: The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization and The Northeast Sasquatch Researchers Association. Bill Brann, the president of the Northern Sasquatch Research Society based in Hudson Falls, N.Y., has conducted frequent investigations in Vermont, writes on his Web site that his goal is to determine “what its purposes are, how to contact and communicate with it and to ultimately obtain an indisputable photographic or video record of its existence.”

Whether real or imaginary, Bigfoot is a legitimate part of Vermont history: a kind of living folklore that continues to frustrate and fascinate.

As new sightings are recorded, the question remains: what should they be recorded under — folklore or zoology?

Time will tell.

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The outbreak of encounters in the Pacific Northwest continues, with reports of a new one the day before Halloween.

Researcher Brian Vike is communicating that new Sasquatch sightings have taken place in British Columbia.

Vike writes that he “took a telephone call at 9:15 a.m. on October 31, 2008 from a nice lady who resides in Moricetown on a Indian reserve. She gave me the contact information for a witness who had a large Sasquatch walk right in-front of her on October 30, 2008.”

In the midst of several sightings taking place in the area since September 2008, Vike notes that “recently on the same reserve, a Sasquatch was seen looking through the window of someone’s home…[and]…another Sasquatch was observed standing in a field.”

cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/new-sasqbc/

During the height of the smoke from Mendocino Lightning Complex fires, a Laytonville man had an encounter with an apelike creature while driving north of Willits on Highway 101 near Shimmins Ridge Road.

“This animal stepped onto the southbound lane near where the guardrail stops,” says LoPinto. “It was very smoky and incredibly hot, at least 100 degrees but still daylight. It ran really fast, directly into the path of a small truck, which had pulled out to pass me, after the lanes had expanded from two lanes to four.

“The creature was completely black and looked all freaked out. I pointed at it so the other driver could see it and hit my brakes, hard. I didn’t think I could stop in time and was sure I was going to hit it. Miraculously the passing truck missed the creature and sped out of sight.

“As the creature ran toward me, I saw it was least seven feet tall. The animal never slowed down as it ran on its hind legs like a man.

“I thought, ‘it looks like a guy in a gorilla suit.’ When it got to middle of the freeway, I could see it clearly. Its whole head was covered in black hair. I couldn’t see any ears. As I was braking hard to make a panic stop the creature put its arms down and started running on four legs, bounding across the freeway. It had giant arms; they were very long and covered with fur.

“When my car finally stopped, I looked out the windshield and it stopped about 25 feet in front of me at the edge of the road. It was at eye level with me as I sat in the car.

“I had no idea what it was. It was covered with hair down to the ground. I looked at its face and it was completely flat without a nose. It turned his whole body toward me-its neck was stiff. We made eye contact. Its face was yellow or gold like a ripe banana. It had holes for its nostrils and a smooth and shiny forehead with ridges instead of eyebrows. It had a simian face.

“I saw a red glow coming back from its eyes; it may have been a reflection from my headlights. Its mouth was closed and it had thin lips, it didn’t show any teeth and made no sound, at all. Then it turned and leapt down into the ditch and up the hillside. I was freaked out.”

At first, Chris LoPinto had no idea what he had seen; he thought it might have been an escaped zoo or circus animal. He called the Department of Fish and Game biologist and found there were no apelike animals native to North America and that no such creature had been reported lost in the area. LoPinto filed an incident report with them. LoPinto also filed a police report with the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Department.

After finding no help from official sources, LoPinto began researching the internet to find answers and found groups devoted to tracking big foot.

He contacted a Bigfoot Society group to report his sighting and was contacted by a Bigfoot field researcher Tom Yamarone.

“I’ve interviewed 40 eyewitnesses and spoken with at least a dozen others,” says Yamarone. “Chris’ account is consistent with other reports, and it was spotted in a likely area. The red glowing eyes are also consistent with others’ observations. The unique aspects of Chris’ account are the close proximity to the creature, that he had a good look the face and eyes and that the creature propelled itself with its front arms.”

LoPinto still doesn’t know what he saw, but he is sure of the details. He also thinks, whatever the creature was, it was obviously disturbed by the heavy smoke and fires throughout the area.

There have been a number of Bigfoot sightings in Mendocino and Humboldt counties according to various Bigfoot sighting lists.

A “paranormal” observer in December 2007 reported seeing a large animal standing on two legs at her car. She reported it patted the window of her car several times before running away at high speed.

In May 2004, a group of six hikers north of Highway 162 near Murry Range reported finding a series of unusual large tracks. One of the witnesses said, according to the report written by Yamarone, “a friend saw one [a Bigfoot] cross Highway 162 just outside of town as he was driving to work in Willits.” Yamarone also notes there are many Bigfoot stories about extending across generations in the Round Valley area.

In 1961 and 1962, a series of Bigfoot tracks were reported by a Bob Titmus northeast of Covelo. In 1962 in a remote area near Fort Bragg, Robert Hatfield reported seeing a Bigfoot standing head and shoulders above a six foot fence. Hatfield later rounded the corner of a house and walked right into the creature. Hatfield was “knocked to the ground and scrambles to the house on all fours.

A neighbor in the house tries to close the door to prevent the creature from getting in. Bigfoot then runs off leaving a large muddy “handprint” on the door.

willitsnews.com/ci_10846711?

TAIPEI, TAIWAN - The two-seat Taiwanese fighter jet disappeared last week during a routine training mission over the Taiwan Strait. Debris and body parts were found the next day, but authorities are at a loss to explain what happened.

The Oct. 20 crash revived decades-old speculation: Are Taiwan’s Penghu islands the Bermuda Triangle of Asia?

“The Bermuda terror,” boomed a headline in the United Evening News, a Taiwanese newspaper. “Three hundred dead or missing in 40 years over here.”

Cable news stations aired grisly images of earlier plane crashes in the area, sparking debate in internet chat rooms.

The reports prompted Penghu officials to issue a statement disputing the Bermuda Triangle comparison, which they fear might scare away investors in a casino resort and other projects.

Most experts dismiss the idea and speculation that an irregular magnetic field disrupts navigation instruments. Scientists have found nothing abnormal in the area, says geologist Chen Wen-shan at National Taiwan University.

The pristine waters around the Penghu islands, a popular beach destination 50 miles (80km) west of the Taiwanese mainland, have seen their share of crashes.

Government records show at least three commercial planes, one civilian helicopter and five fighter jets have crashed in the area in the past two decades.

Earlier, several spy planes reportedly went down or missing while flying missions to mainland China during the Cold War in the 1960s and 1970s. The military refuses to confirm the reports, saying most of the documents remain classified.

The deadliest accident came in May 2002, when a China Airlines flight to Hong Kong broke into four parts over seas north of Penghu, killing all 225 aboard. Seven months later, a cargo plane crashed in the same area.

The back-to-back crashes bolstered the Bermuda Triangle speculation so much, that tourists all but shunned Penghu in the following months.

So far, the recent fighter jet crash has not rekindled as many jitters among the public, much to the relief of local officials.

Penghu County Chief Wang Chien-fa blames the crashes on the high volume of air traffic, saying most of the mishaps have been shown to be the result of either human or mechanical failure.

“With so many aircraft flying over our air space everyday, the chances of crashes are proportionally higher, and that’s all,” he said in a telephone interview.

Yuan Hsiao-feng, an aviation expert at National Chengkung University, points to the high risks of military training flights.

Ending a summer season that drew thousands of swimmers to its beaches, the island chain of 90,000 people is now getting ready to welcome windsurfers.

Tourism officials also hope that Penghu will benefit from a recent relaxing of travel restrictions for mainland Chinese who want to visit Taiwan.

The islands, first settled by shipwrecked Chinese sailors 700 years ago, have an undersea ancient wall and other ruins. They also are an attraction because they were once at the forefront of the bitter Taiwan-China military standoff, said tourism official Hong Tung-lin.

The Chinese have long seen the islands as mysterious, because of their inaccessibility and a past history of shipwrecks, he said.

South of Penghu, an area called the “Ditch of Black Waters” is a graveyard for numerous boats, said to have capsized in swirling seas during the height of Chinese immigration to Taiwan two to three centuries ago.

Japanese pilots and sailors are said to have tried to avoid the rough seas off Penghu, known to them as the “devil’s sea” during Japan’s 50-year rule of Taiwan that ended in 1945.

Today, trawlers and cargo ships sail through the region safely.

“The mystic perception is fine but we hope people will not associate this area with danger,” Hong said.

nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10540021