Monsters and Myths

The bizarre markings spotted using Google Earth’s new underwater search tool last week unleashed a tsunami of theories and speculation across the Web about the origins of the gridlike pattern.

The most popular theory was that the markings were signs of the lost city of Atlantis. But Bits readers also wondered if the maze of lines could be anything from the mystical island featured on the television show “Lost” to an underwater lair inhabited by former Vice President Dick Cheney.

According to Google, it’s time to shelve those tinfoil hats.

In an interview, Steve Miller, product manager for Ocean in Google Earth, firmly debunked rumors that the crisscross markings were anything other than artificial data remnants left by sonar-equipped boats collecting data from the ocean floor.

While sound waves are considered to be more effective than satellites for mapping strips of the ocean floor, they’re often more expensive and time-consuming to use. “The boats have to go slowly. Otherwise, they make a lot of noise and can wash out the readings,” said Mr. Miller. As a result, boats are used less frequently, leaving fewer gridlike sonar patterns visible on Google Earth’s map of the ocean.

For the patch of ocean that drew so much attention last week, there was a discrepancy in the readings collected from satellites and the higher-resolution echosounding data collected by boats at water level. That caused exaggerated traces to show up on the map. Typically, when data collected by satellites and sonar surveys are blended, the result is much smoother, Mr. Miller said. But here, the “batches of imagery didn’t overlap properly.”

Mr. Miller compared it to the blurry stripes that are occasionally visible in Google Earth’s land maps. “Those patches are from cameras and instruments using different resolutions,” he said. Over time, those uneven patches smooth out as Google puts more images and data into the system.

As for the speculation that the markings off the western coast of Africa were located near one of the possible sites of the fabled sunken city of Atlantis, Mr. Miller said it was a coincidence. “To my knowledge, the researchers weren’t looking for Atlantis. They conducted this survey many years ago.” They very likely sent out a boat to comb for additional readings in this particular area, he said.

Mr. Miller also highlighted several other findings in Google Earth’s new Ocean feature, including a newly formed volcanic island close to Hawaii and an underwater mountain range in the Atlantic Ocean where two tectonic plates are visibly shifting away from one another.

Was the whole “Atlantis” uproar a well-orchestrated publicity stunt for Google’s new ocean maps, which were introduced earlier this month?

Mr. Miller said no. But the reports certainly drew a lot of armchair explorers eager to view the waterlogged pattern. Searches for “google ocean” and “atlantis google ocean” spiked over the last several days.
bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/google-explains-watery-mystery-of-atlantis

WEST BRANCH - An illusion of the light, a figment of the shadows, a trick played on a travel-weary eye?

Hard telling.

A quick glimpse was all that Phil Shaw and his wife ever received, but he was certain of this much: The creature that crossed the forest clearing stood upright, was much larger than a man and moved in a way that was definitely non-human.

“There was an opening in the trees and this guy was just going across there,” says Shaw. “She and I looked at each other and at the same time we said, ‘Did you see what I saw?’

“We didn’t see any hair or clothes, like you would on a human. And he had a funny gait, which is often the case in a Bigfoot sighting; people say their movements are not quite human.”

That was three years ago during a family vacation to the Canadian Maritime Provinces.

Returning home to Ogemaw County, Carol Shaw put the beastly episode out of her mind, claiming one of those first three possibilities probably holds the truth.

But not Phil Shaw.

Three years worth of studies and interviews have only strengthened his belief that Bigfoot is lurking out there.

“I’m just intrigued by the possibility that Bigfoot is real, I guess,” Shaw says, noting there are more than 100 recorded sightings in Michigan. “I’m convinced there is something to this. There is far more evidence to prove there is a Bigfoot than there is evidence to suggest that there is not.”

Shaw is not shy when it comes to discussing Bigfoot. He’ll deliver a presentation to any group that invites him. Still, he is well aware that most folks don’t take the idea of a 700-pound, ape-like creature running through the local forest too seriously.

“I think people are spooked by it,” he says. “I don’t know why - I’m not talking religion, I’m not talking politics, I’m not talking sex. Why should they be spooked? You can tell they are embarrassed because they try to change the subject.”

He admits that the Bigfoot phenomenon attracts more than its share of charlatans and frauds, such as the rubber-ape suit frozen in ice that was presented to the world last fall during a nationally televised press conference. Perpetrators of those frauds cast an air of suspicion over those seeking honest answers and legitimate discussion about Bigfoot’s possibility, Shaw said.

Yet enough legitimate evidence, published books and articles and first-hand accounts exist that Shaw can’t dismiss the idea of an unknown giant ape living in relative isolation among us.

“There are a limited number of motion pictures and films. We have photographs. We have footprints and hand castings - there are thousands of those,” Shaw says. Add to that body impressions, scat and hair samples, beds and structures and, the way Shaw sees it, the evidence points to the existence of Bigfoot.

What’s more, the group of believers is growing ever larger and includes anthropologists, biologists and wildlife experts.

Nationally, there are more than 5,000 claimed sightings and similar creatures are a world-wide phenomenon stretching back centuries. Counting the notorious Sasquatch of the Pacific Northwest, Florida’s skunk ape, Ohio’s grassmen, the Himalayan yeti and others, Bigfoot is part of a very large family, too.

Still, those who claim to see Bigfoot are often met with derision. Shaw, retired from the federal Farmers Home Administration, says the only reason he dares to speak out is “because I don’t have a boss that can fire me.”

“You can’t blame people for not saying anything,” Shaw said. “A lot of these sightings go back 10, 15, 20 years. They say, ‘I mentioned it to my family and they ridiculed me so much I never mentioned it again.’ And for every one that comes forward, there are 10 or 15 sightings that are never told.”

By Shaw’s argument, the creatures prevent detection by residing remotely, often in swamps and mountain ranges. And he feels they are closer to apes than man - bipedal with lots of hair, good night vision, mainly herbivore. Close encounters indicate they smell bad, a completely understandable result of their swamp environment, Shaw says.

Those who have heard vocalizations, including locals, call them haunting.

The sound they make is long and low, but it can be quite loud,” Shaw said.

“If they’re intelligent at all, and I think they are, they could remain undetected,” Shaw says. “They’re very shy, like a bear, and it’s lucky they are. If they offended one of us, we’d get up a posse and go out and kill them.”

Shaw has been part of a posse before, though he wasn’t looking to bag a Bigfoot. But the Bigfoot Field Research Organization, a scientific research group, does hold organized expeditions across the country. Shaw participated in one that took a group of Bigfoot believers through the Upper Peninsula woods on an unsuccessful search for the creature.

Sooner or later someone will meet with success, Shaw says, and deliver hard evidence - an irrefutable photograph, a video or DNA evidence. In the meantime, the Internet has expanded the capacity for scientists, backyard researchers and Bigfoot believers to communicate and share ideas.

It also has become a way for first-time observers, many of whom previously either did not believe or gave the legend no thought, to share their stories.

Until, like Shaw, they saw a Bigfoot for themselves.

“People should be more open minded; that’s my conclusion,” Shaw said. “If anyone is out in the woods, take a camera. You might only have a minute or two, but that might be enough time to get a photo.”

mlive.com/news/bay-city/index.ssf/2009/02/despite_skeptics_west_branch_b.html

On February 15th of this year at around 6pm the residents of the south eastern Siberian city of Chita (population around 300,000) in Russia witnessed a giant UFO cross their city and then disappear over the horizon. Some managed to photograph the craft with their mobile phones. Shocked pedestrians stopped in the town centre and in parks and pointed to sky declaring the object to be a UFO. Above is a photo of the craft.

One witness, a Ms. Anna Kotchetkova , who saw the object after her sons excitedly alerted her to it observed that it looked like ‘nothing on earth’. The UFO was described by witnesses as being completely silent and emitting no lights, its colour was grey-black and looked like a triangle with smoothed edges. Its shape was somewhat irregular and there was said to be some blurriness about the craft.

Other witnesses attempted to photograph the UFO but couldn’t due to its speed and difficulty focusing however multiple photos are said to have surfaced. The UFO was estimated to be flying at around 500-1000 meters above land and appeared to be around the size of a Boeing 747. It was estimated to be moving at around 7 metres per second.

The incident is being widely reported in the Russian media and immediately after the sighting many members of the press made their way to the Siberian city. UFO research teams are also planning to visit the area to interview witnesses.

Many suspect a secret UFO base lies somewhere in the vast spaces of Siberia.

This sighting adds weight to this view.

allnewsweb.com/page5995996.php

Wednesday February 25th 2008 at 8PM Central on the History Channel.

For over 250 years a frightening winged beast has been menacing the residents of New Jersey. The Jersey Devil is described as a winged half-bird half-horse, with hoofed feet and reptilian tail and a penetrating scream that echoes through the forests of New Jersey’s Pine Barrens.

During one phenomenal week, over a thousand individuals were terrorized: a trolley car was attacked, schools were closed and panic gripped the area. Wildlife experts claim however, that misidentification with a known animal may be responsible for the encounters, but recent witnesses who see the beast are scared for their lives–and say the scientific evidence will prove there is a monster.

MonsterQuest launches an unprecedented expedition for the Jersey Devil and sends sixty men into the forbidding forest while detectives meet the witnesses to discover the truth behind the Jersey Devil.

cryptmundo.com/cryptozoo-news/jd-mq

In legend, sprites are trolls, elves and other spirits that dance high above our ozone layer. But scientists at Tel Aviv University have discovered that some very real “sprites” are zipping across the atmosphere as well, providing a possible explanation for those other legendary denizens of the skies, UFOs.

Thunderstorms, says Prof. Colin Price, head of the Geophysics and Planetary Sciences Department at Tel Aviv University, are the catalyst for a newly discovered natural phenomenon he calls “sprites.” He and his colleagues are one of the leading teams in the world studying the phenomenon, and Prof. Price leads the study of “winter sprites” ? those that appear only in the northern hemisphere’s winter months.

“Sprites appear above most thunderstorms,” explains Prof. Price, “but we didn’t see them until recently. They are high in the sky and last for only a fraction of a second.” While there is much debate over the cause or function of these mysterious flashes in the sky, they may, Prof. Price says, explain some bizarre reports of UFO sightings.

An Electrifying Discovery

Sprites are described as flashes high in the atmosphere, between 35 and 80 miles from the ground, much higher than the 7 to 10 miles where regular lightning bolts usually occur.

“Lightning from the thunderstorm excites the electric field above, producing a flash of light called a sprite,” explains Prof. Price. “We now understand that only a specific type of lightning is the trigger that initiates sprites aloft.”

Though sprites have existed for millions of years, they were first discovered and documented only by accident in 1989 when a researcher studying stars was calibrating a camera pointed at the distant atmosphere where sprites occur.

“Sprites, which only occur in conjunction with thunderstorms, never occur on their own, and are cousins to similar natural phenomenon dubbed by atmospheric electricians as ‘elves,’ ‘goblins’ and ‘trolls,’” Prof. Price says. These flashes are so named because they appear to “dance” in the sky, which may explain some UFO sightings.

Candles on a Celestial Birthday Cake

Tel Aviv University’s research team is one of the leading global groups studying the phenomenon. But Prof. Price and his students are now working in collaboration with other Israeli scientists from The Open University and The Hebrew University to take three-dimensional pictures of sprites to gain a better understanding of their structure. Using remote-controlled roof-mounted cameras, the researchers are able to look at the thunderstorms that produce sprites when they are still over the Mediterranean Sea.

From their unique vantage point in Israel, the researchers are leading the world in the study of winter sprites. Prof. Price’s new camera techniques, in particular, have revealed the sprites’ circular structures, which are much like those of candles on a birthday cake. Using triangulation, Prof. Price and his team have also been able to calculate the dimensions of the sprites’ features. “The candles in the sprites are up to 15 miles high, with the cluster of candles 45 miles wide –– it looks like a huge birthday celebration!”

Because of their high altitude, sprites may also have an impact on the chemistry of the Earth’s ozone layer. “Since they are relatively infrequent, the global impact is likely small,” says Prof. Price. “But we’re researching that now.”

sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090223131119.htm

Woman claims to have been attacked by ‘werewolf’
According to the victim’s account, the creature looked like a big dog. Police is looking for a suspect that may have used a costume to attack the girl.

The inhabitants of São Sepé, Rio Grande do Sul, [Brazil] have one more reason to fear Friday the 13th. Besides the bad luck and the strange happenings during the day, a ‘werewolf’ is supposedly at large. One of the possible victims, a 20-year-old, recorded her complaint in the police.

According to the police, Kelly Martins Becker claims to have been attacked in the night of January 28 by an animal that looked like a big dog, that was standing on its back feet and walked as if it were a man. She made a sketch of the creature.

According to the complaint, the creature scratched the face and arms of the victim. The police informed that Kelly underwent medical examination, where the wounds were confirmed. Officers also claim they will investigate if someone is using a werewolf costume to scare people. No suspect was arrested until Friday.

AROUND THE COUNTRY
Cases similar to the one from São Sepé were recorded. In the rural area of Tauá, Ceará, locals asked for police help in July 2008, scared with sightings of an individual “half man and half wolf” that was stealing sheep and breaking into houses.

At the time, the police investigated the case, suspecting that a gang was using costumes to scare the locals and commit the crimes. The case, called ‘the midnight mystery’, then became a joke in the city.

In April 2008, some inhabitants of Santana do Livramento, Rio Grande do Sul, also had their moments of terror with the attacks of the ‘Man in the Black Cape’. With no solid evidence about the creature’s sightings, the police archived the records as folklore.”

If you are a diligent Fortean, you will associate this series of reports with popular panics around the world and history, from the more recent Monkey Man in India (c. 2001) going as far back as the Spring-Heeled Jack in England (c. 1837 and onwards).

And those are just the more obviously similar and famous cases. So similar they are almost identical, with only a couple of differences, like the height of the Indian and the Brazilian creatures. Does this make them real?

Curiously, the more you acquaint yourself with numerous similar cases, the more an alternative explanation that sounds terrible at first looks more and more acceptable. It’s mass sociogenic illness. Or, as it’s popularly known, mass hysteria.

It’s a damned expression, due to no doubt much abuse. Robert Bartholomew is the name to look for if you still dread that term. See: Protean nature of mass sociogenic illness – From possessed nuns to chemical and biological terrorism fears.

We shouldn’t keep abusing the term and tagging everything as “mass hysteria” – criminals could be using costumes, and it’s not impossible that an unknown violent bipedal creature is lurking those places. Only highly improbable, the more so as no solid evidence ever comes up.

And the one important thing about ‘mass sociogenic illness” is that though the creatures may not be real, the victims are. They may also be highly educated, intelligent people.
forgetomori.com/2009/skepticism/a-brazilian-werewolf-is-back

Grainy images of a large snake in Borneo’s Baleh river have some locals afraid the mythical Nabu snake is back. Is Borneo’s 100-foot river snake—reported yesterday by London’s Telegraph and captured in photographs real?

Like the Loch Ness Monster, countless UFOs and Bigfoot, it’s hard to say, says Hany Farid, a computer science professor at Dartmouth University, because it’s been captured in such low resolution. “It’s as if you took a blood sample,” he says, “threw away 99 percent of it and asked me to do a forensic analysis.”

An expert of digital photography forensics, Farid notes that with so few pixels to analyze, there’s much less evidence to weigh in one way or the other. At a high resolution—say, 1,000 by 1,000 pixels—tampering gets tougher. At that level, he says, “It’s really hard to do. You’ve got to get it all just right.”

The low level of resolution is precisely why viewers should be skeptical. To make a fraudulent photo, he says, one would want to work in high resolution, fake it as cleanly as possible and then compress it and make it a bit blurry. “That’s a good way of masking any artifacts that you’ve left behind,” he says.

Plus, Farid notes that although the fuzziness of UFO and Nessie photos might add a bit of desirable mystique, in this day and age of high-quality point-and-shoot digital cameras, there really aren’t many reasons why anyone’s daytime photos should be as blurry as those of the Borneo “snake.”

In addition to the resolution of the two snake photos, other characteristics of an easy fake pop up as well, he observes. Both images show the snake in a somewhat open area, not interacting with other objects. It would be a lot more difficult, Farid says, to fake a snake wrapped around a person.

Although Farid won’t opine whether the Borneo photos are real or manipulated, he suggests a handy rule of thumb: “When you look at images, you should think about, ‘How hard would this be to do?’”

sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=are-the-photos-of-borneos-monster-s-2009-02-20

Reports that a mermaid had been found in San Jose, Negros Oriental turned out to be false but this did not stop people from flocking to the marine laboratory of Silliman University hoping to get a glimpse of the mythical creature.

Over the past three days, hordes of men, women and children in Dumaguete and nearby areas flocked to the marine laboratory, now called the Silliman University Institute of Environmental and Marine Sciences, after reports of the mermaid became widespread.

The news, which broke on Wednesday allegedly through at least two radio stations here, and through text messaging, attracted scores of people to visit the facility, paying the minimum entrance fee of P10 per person, despite being told by the security guards there was no mermaid to see.

SU-IEMS director and internationally respected marine scientist Dr. Hilconida Calumpong scoffed at the reports, saying these were “irresponsible”.

Calumpong said that where marine scientists are concerned, there are two kinds of mermaids: the mythological half human and half aquatic creature as popularized in fairy tales and movies, like “Ariel, the Little Mermaid”, and the endangered “dugong (sea cow)”, which many fishermen always mistake for a mermaid.

Mythical mermaids appear to have the torso of a woman and the tail of a fish, while the mermen are portrayed as ugly compared to their female counterparts, but with healing powers. Sometimes they carry a trident.

In Greek mythology, mermaids are said to enchant people with their lovely voices and distract men from their work on ships, causing them to drown.

Mermaids and mermen also proliferate in Philippine folklore, where they are known as “sirena” and “syokoy”.

The romantic appeal of these half human-half aquatic creatures is just too much to resist so, understandably, people could not wait for their chance to see a mermaid in real life, Calumpong said.

News of the discovery of the mermaid was immediately connected to the Feb. 7 disaster wrought by heavy rainfall and massive flooding as a result of a low pressure area in the Central Visayas.

Calumpong admitted that she got excited when she first heard the news, saying what first came to her mind was that a dugong had been stranded off the coast of Negros Oriental.

But, nobody contacted them regarding the discovery of the “mermaid” or stranding of an unusually large fish.

She said she was surprised to see so many people coming to the SU-IEMS facility, whose earnings from entrance fees were hiked up in just two to three days.

The dugong (spp. Dugong dugon) is a marine mammal listed under the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources as a species vulnerable to extinction.

In recent years, conservation efforts were launched in the north of Negros Island after reported sightings of dugong in Sagay, Manapla, Cadiz and other municipalities, said Dr. Calumpong.

Calumpong said fishermen who come across dugongs usually refer to them as “mermaids”, especially when seen with their suckling calves.

She appealed to the public to cooperate with authorities in reporting marine mammal strandings, and to the local media to practice “responsible journalism”.

visayandailystar.com/2009/February/16/negor2.htm

Recently in the news a few photographs were taken of a supposed one hundred foot long snake swimming up the rivers in Borneo. This snake is said to be Borneo’s version of the Loch Ness Monster but the photos themselves can actually be of anything, including a photoshop job. One photo shows the snake happily swimming in the Baleh River, while the other photo reveals the snake peering above the waters off the coast of Borneo near a small fishing village. If this snake is real, exactly what kind of snake might it be?

It is possible this snake can be a a real water serpent, as some reptiles tend to live in water such as the alligator. Or it could be an eel, mistaken for a sea serpent, as the natives believe to see every now and then. It can even be an entirely new species of snake, for all the scientists know. Not too long ago a fossil of a 45 foot long snake was discovered in Colombia in South America. Given the tropical climate of that part of the world, it is not unusual for a snake to attain such a gargantuan size. The Brazilian rain forests are known for their anacondas, even though these snakes are nowhere near a hundred feet long.

Those who live on the island of Borneo have even given the monster a name - Nabau - making it feel more at home and giving them a bit of notoriety. Every culture deserves to have some legend to call their own, even if it bears a similarity to a legend in a loch located in the United Kingdom.

Looking at the photos again and again, soon the reputed snake ceases to be real. It looks like someone manipulated the creature, if there was one, in the area when the photos were being taken. It looks to smooth to be a curved branch just flowing with the water current down the river and off the coast. The village doesn’t look too lively but it is of course possible everyone there was elsewhere or taking a nap.

If the photos were manipulated, the most likely creature that got stretched was an eel. Eels are common in warm bodies of water so it wouldn’t surprise me if some Indonesian eel had his photo snapped when he wasn’t looking. At least it gives the people in Borneo something to talk about and it puts the island on the map.

associatedcontent.com/article/1495839/the_borneo_monster_fact_or_fiction.html?cat=9

Claims that the lost city of Atlantis had been found on Google Earth have had cold water poured on them by the search engine.

Experts had spotted a “grid of streets” on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean 620 miles off the coast of north west Africa, which they thought could be the lost city.

It was claimed that the rectangular markings - around the size of Wales - could even indicate the street layout of the sunken city.

But Google today said the marking were in fact the path that boats collecting Bathymetric sea floor terrain data.

In other news no-one has seen Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster on Google Earth either.

newslite.tv/2009/02/20/city-of-atlantis-not-found-on.html