Monsters and Myths

The search for the Yeti or Bigfoot of Shoria Mountain in Russia is set to continue as the snows melt and the weather warms in Siberia. The expedition will commence in June 2009 and will be headed by Valery Kimiev and Professor Nikolai Skalon, the head of the department of Zoology at the Kemerovo State University. Local’s are still alleging they have seen the bigfoot type creature in the area surrounding the Azass Caves on many occasions. One local will be joining the expedition, Hunter Michael Kiskarov who claims to have seen a Yeti more than once.

The local head of government  Vladimir Tashtagol has received 14 written reports by residents of remote villages around the area of the Azass caves and the nearby Mrassu river claiming to have seen these creatures in recent years. The Cryptids are described as being two meters tall, with reddish black hair that resembles that of a brown bear.

The Azass cave is several kilometres deep and it is believed the Yeti or Yeti’s dwell deep in its interior. Some believe that the creature is a lone neanderthal survivor or the sightings have been of one of a number the species, part of a small colony that represents the world’s last Neanderthals.

Source: allnewsweb

“Be careful of what you find,” Diane Stocking warned. “It may well be a rock.”

Stocking, one of three guest speakers Saturday at the 21st annual Bigfoot Conference/Expo, said that what may initially appear to be evidence of Bigfoot or Sasquatch activity must be scrutinized thoroughly before conclusions can be reached.

For example, an apparent footprint was located along a stream and a plaster cast made. Further investigation — by none other than Peter Byrne, one of the so-called “Four Horsemen of Sasquatchery” who led a three-year search for the Abominable Snowman (or Yeti) in Asia — revealed that the impression, though remarkably footprint-like in appearance, was actually made by a rock that had been dislodged from its resting place.

Stocking is president of Florida-based Stocking Hominid Research Inc. She possesses a degree in forestry, served several years as curator of the Bigfoot Field Research Organization and is well known in the Bigfoot research arena.

Twisted trees can also often be mistaken for Bigfoot activity, she said. But tornados, microbursts and ice storms can cause such damage too.

So-called “stick stacks” and “weaves” must also be carefully considered, she said. Some formations can occur naturally from falling branches. Others are man-made, possibly by hikers seeking temporary shelter.

Stocking said that one weave in Oregon does not appear to be either natural or man-made, as trees were pulled inward to form a teepee-like formation. The peak was no less than 15 feet from the ground when she examined the formation about 1 1/2 years after its initial discovery by another researcher. The original peak was higher, she said, as the formation had begun to collapse in on itself.

Tree markings can be the result of elk rubs, bear clawings, buck scrapes and porcupines.

Bears walk in such a manner that they place their hind paws into the print of their front paws. This can lead to elongated prints that appear human-like. Animal prints in snow can expand due to thawing.

Bears suffering from mange can, at a distance and standing upright on their hind feet, appear Bigfoot-like. Tree stumps in photographs have given rise to some reported Bigfoot sightings.

Stocker denounced claims that Bigfoot have a mid-tarsal break in their feet giving them flexibility beyond that of humans. She said that biped movement requires a rigid arch.

Though having no personal sightings, Stocking said she does believe that Bigfoot exists. The creature is intelligent and elusive, easily able to avoid detection if it so chooses. Encounters with humans may simply be accidental.

Billy Willard also addressed the audience of several hundred. He formed Sasquatch Watch of Virginia with his son Josh in 2005.

Among the team members is John, who shared his encounter  from 1982 during a hunting trip to North Carolina. His first time hunting, he was stationed in a deer stand. At about 9 a.m. he noticed an odor that sickened him. He had dry heaves, felt the hair on his head stand up as if by static shock, began to convulse and fell to the floor of the stand.

About five minutes later he sat up and began to hear noises. About 50 yards away was a figure he saw only from the waist up. The creature pulled tree branches through its mouth, stripped off the leaves. It peered from left top right periodically, turning its upper body as it did so.

“This wasn’t a person wearing a costume or playing a joke on me,” he said.

It would be more than two decades before John could bring himself to return to the forest.

Willard shared details of several incidences he and his team have investigated, including one in Salt Fork State Park in April near a public picnic area. A track, possibly that of a juvenile Bigfoot, was found and cast. Eyeshine (light reflected from eyes) was seen and members entered the woods. At one point a stick was thrown in Willard’s direction; he saw it travel end-over-end, not flatly, as if it fell from a tree.

Willard also experienced a similar feeling to that of John on an investigation. He became sick and disoriented and laid down on the ground for a few minutes before regaining his bearing.

“I’ve never had that feeling before,” he said, “and I’ve not had it since.”

One theory put forward to explain such experiences is that the creature emits “infrasound” in frequencies of less than 20 Hertz that can cause disorientation in some people. Infrasound is known to be used by some animals in the wild, including elephants and tigers, Willard said.

During a 2007 expedition to Paris, Texas, Willard and team member Tom L. were sleeping in a tent at the end of a campground. By his own admission Willard is a loud snorer. His partner later said that he heard footfalls to the tent, felt the poles being shaken, saw the silhouette of a creature and heard the creature mimic Willard’s snoring sounds.

The following morning Willard said he had what he thought initially was a dream in which something grabbed his leg through the fabric of the tent. Efforts to brush it off failed so he balled his hand into a fist and punched it and fell back asleep. After hearing of Tom L.’s experience he checked his leg and found a red mark where he believed he had been grabbed.

Doug Hajicek was scheduled to speak but was forced to cancel due to business-related obligations, said Keating. Hajicek is perhaps best known for his “Monster Quest” series airing on the History Channel. Keating was featured in one of those episodes dealing with Bigfoot in Ohio, known as the “grassman.”

Keating himself shared information regarding the first and most recent sightings to take place in Salt Fork State Park.

Shortly after the state park opened in 1972 a woman spotted a creature crossing the roadway not far from the cabins. It was the first of four separate sightings taking place over a two-week period. The last and perhaps most terrifying was that of a park ranger who peered out a ranger station window into the face of an alleged Bigfoot. Instinctively he lashed out, Keating said, shattering the glass pane with his hand. The injury required dozens of stitches to close.

On Feb. 9 a West Virginia couple driving through the park spotted a creature walking up a hill. They turned their automobile around and observed the creature “hugging” a tree. Keating said this may have been an attempt by the creature to conceal itself.

Four things are required for a sighting, Keating said: A creature to be observed, an observer, that observer willing to share his/her sighting and circulation within the community of the sighting. Though he is aware of more than two dozen alleged sightings in Salt Fork State Park, there are certainly others that go unreported, possibly from fear of ridicule.

The conference ended with a question and answer session with both speakers, Keating, John and Eric Altman of the Pennsylvania Bigfoot Society.

Source: dailyjeff

Fifty years ago sightings of the Loch Ness Monster or ‘Nessie’ were common and few Scottish locals doubted the presence of an exotic water creature in their locale which might have been the last living member an isolated relic Plesiosaur population. Sightings of Nessie have decreased over the last few years and extensive and thorough scanning of the Loch Ness by scientists and researchers have failed to produce any evidence of Nessie. This has led many to believe, sadly, that this gentle, secretive creature had passed on. Now, astonishingly, frequent sightings are being reported of a creature living in the English Channel that appears, judging by images (picture above, video below) captured by astonished witnesses, to be similar in form to Nessie. This cryptid has been dubbed ‘The Channel Creature’.

Many are now asking: Is Nessie the Channel Creature? Is it possible that a hidden water passage exists linking the Loch Ness to the ocean? Perhaps Nessie instinctively realises that open knowledge of her presence would jeapordise her existence and has thus moved out to sea. UFO activity in the area is fairly frequent and a UFO is reported to have crashed in the region some five years ago. Was Nessie placed in the lake by extraterrestrials and then moved by them for her own safety?

Some Nessie researchers claim that scientists are aware of the Loch Ness Monster’s presence and the existence of a secret underwater tunnel leading to the sea ‘She goes out to mate, thus perpetuating the elusive species. But she always returns home to the Loch Ness’ one told us.

He ekes out a solitary existence deep in the woods, surviving by snaring rabbits and foraging for berries.

But when nature alone cannot satisfy his needs, the shaggy bearded recluse will leave his lair and, with the stealth of a wild animal, go on the prowl for other prey in the nearby villages.

Locals call him ‘The Wolfman’ and blame him for a series of thefts of milk from their doorsteps.

The one man mini-crimewave is also suspected of a string of thefts of shopping from parked cars and clothes from washing lines during his furtive forays into the civilised world over the last two years.

Police have tried to catch him during searches on foot and have even sent up a helicopter with heat-seeking equipment to track him down, but he has so far always managed to avoid capture.

He knows the miles of paths through the dense woodland near Ammanford, South Wales, where he lurks, so well that even when officers are on his trail, he manages to give them the slip.

Abandoned hideouts made from board with plastic roofs have been found, suggesting he moves around to avoid arrest.

Some locals believe ‘The Wolfman’ - said to be in his 30s and to look ‘dishevelled’ - also hides in holes in the ground.

In the hamlet of Pantyffynon, which is one of his hunting grounds, disgruntled householders have threatened to send out vigilante search parties to find him.

Now there are also fears that child fans of the X-Men comic book superhero Wolverine, as played by Hugh Jackman, might think it fun to go looking for him and put themselves in danger.

Today one villager said: ‘We want him caught before something serious happens.’

Police have vowed they will catch him ’sooner or later’ and have appealed to locals not to start scouring the woods themselves.

Sergeant Charles Gabe warned: ‘We would advise people not to take the law into their own hands or approach this man.

‘We’ve found one or two hides where we believe he has been sleeping. We think he catches rabbits and eats berries or whatever else he can get his hands on.

‘But although we’ve had the police helicopter overhead using heat-seeking equipment we’ve still been unable to locate him.

‘This a massive thickly-wooded area - and one he obviously knows well.

‘On one occasion a couple of our guys came close to nabbing him but he scarpered back into the woods. But we are sure he will be caught sooner of later.’

Local councillor Hugh Evans said: ‘It’s a very strange case and no-one seems to know who he is.

‘But he must be a bit of a Rambo type and pretty tough to have survived the bitterly cold winter living out in the open.

‘The area where he is living is thickly-wooded and forested - the sort of area where it is easy to disappear.’

‘The Wolfman’ lives in the woodland on an area of  reclaimed coal slagheaps known locally as ‘The Tips’.

A Dyfed-Powys Police spokesman said: ‘We want to question him over several alleged incidents.’

Source: Dailymail.uk

Rich La Monica was behind the wheel of a box truck on a late winter day when he saw a large figure moving through the briars beneath the leafless trees.

“It wasn’t human. It was just too big,” La Monica said. “It definitely looked like what you’d expect to see of a Bigfoot.”

Fearing people would think he was nuts, he kept quiet about what he saw for four years, until he found a community of believers in 1992.

“Then I knew there were actually hundreds of people who had seen them,” he said.

This weekend, hundreds of believers from around the nation will descend on Salt Fork State Park for the 21st annual Bigfoot Conference.

The free event in the ballroom of the park’s lodge will feature exhibits and a tour of nearby locations of Bigfoot sightings. There also will be several speakers, including Doug Hajicek, producer of the History Channel’s “MonsterQuest.”

The show aired an episode last summer that included interviews with La Monica and Don Keating, director of the Eastern Ohio Bigfoot Investigation Center and conference host. The episode was called “Ohio Grassman.”

Grassman as a local name for the Bigfoot stems from the 1940s and 1950s, before “bigfoot” became a household name, said Keating, who was one of the authorities interviewed for the program.

In the 1940s and 1950s, children would tell their parents they saw a large man walking through the grass, hence the name “Grassman,” Keating said.

Sightings date back to at least 1869, when people reported seeing what they called “Wildmen,” super-humanly large, hairy creatures. Since then more than 300 sightings have been reported, said Keating, who said he has had two encounters.

He and a network of colleagues investigate reports of sightings, including ones in rural parts of Ashtabula, Medina, Portage and Summit counties.

Keating excludes reports that are clearly false.

“There’s a lot of people out there who try to make Bigfoot investigators look like total idiots,” Keating said. “You cannot be gullible.”

But he knows gullible, foolish or even crazy is what skeptics would say he and other believers are.

Believers point out that for a long time people believed that the world was flat, that there were no planets around stars other than the sun, that no creature could live near the thermal vents at the bottom of the ocean. They say that new creatures are discovered all the time and that no Westerner had seen a panda until late in the 1800s.

Even those who accept that science evolves often remain certain that there is no such thing as Bigfoot.

La Monica says, “If they ever have the experience, I’m sure they’ll understand why I believe.”

Source: cleveland.com

THE fossil of a ‘Loch Ness monster’ has been discovered on the Lyme Regis coast.

Hundreds of miles away from its usual home in the Scottish lakes, the fossil of a four-metre plesiosaur has been unearthed on Monmouth Beach.

The extinct marine reptile lived in Dorset’s Jurassic seas around 150 to 200 million years ago, although in popular culture it has been likened to ‘lake monsters’, including the Loch Ness monster.

Local fossil collector Tracey Barkley discovered a number of bones from the creature in the ammonite pavement within the Axmouth to Lyme Regis Undercliffs National Nature Reserve (NNR).

Richard Edmonds, science manager with the World Heritage Site Team, said: “They are very rare. There are only 10 or 12 known examples of complete or even partial skeletons of this species. I have been doing this for 30-odd years and I have only ever found the odd bone or two.”

The remains of the elusive reptile were extracted and Charmouth fossil expert Chris Moore is now preparing the specimen for display.

Mr Edmonds said: “From what has been done so far we can already see it has actually been chewed up a bit. Some of the back bones are completely in place where they should be and some are missing.

“There are teeth marks and you can see how the skeleton has been torn apart by some other nasty marine reptile.”

But the decision to remove the fossil plesiosaur from the ammonite pavement was not an easy one. “The specimen could not have been in a more sensitive location, in the famous and iconic ammonite pavement, and there was a risk that we could damage the pavement by the act of removing the fossil,” said Mr Edmonds.

Because of the potential scientific importance of the fossil, it was decided the specimen would be extracted. If left in place, it could potentially have been destroyed by novice collectors or eventually washed away and eroded by the sea.

Tom Sunderland of Natural England, who manage the NNR, said: “There are restrictions on collecting fossils in the NNR, particularly the removal and sale of specimens but we need to work with collectors and the general public in order to strike the right balance and ensure scientifically important fossils are not lost.”

Mr Edmonds said this latest find would not have been possible without the help of local fossil hunters.

Source: bridgeportnews.uk

The “Association of Maritime Research” is calling for witnesses to come forward pertaining to sightings of a mysterious creature in the English Channel off the coast of Dover. A reward is being offered for information leading to proof of the creature’s existence.

“On 20th April 2009 Thierry and Sophie were enjoying a walk at the Boulogne Harbour. They are both passionate about boats and sea-life and intended filming the variety of boats sailing out of the harbour. As Thierry was filming, his eye glued to the lens, he suddenly became aware of a large shape which appeared on the horizon. Intrigued, he zoomed the camera in to focus more clearly and saw a huge, dark, rapidly moving object, which disappeared within a matter of seconds. Something of an amateur expert about the sea and marine life, he knew this was not simply the outline of a whale or any similar creature and was convinced that he had sighted some phenomenon as yet unseen by man. He decided to contact the AMR who are pursuing further investigations.

Now they need your help. The AMR are appealing for witnesses to come forward and help them find the Channel Creature, or similar sea monsters. Anyone who gives evidence leading directly to proof of the creature’s existence will receive a reward. “

Source: channelcreature.com

THE Yowie has been unfairly blamed for the death of a dog in the Top End, according to one of the world’s leading cryptonaturalists.

Territory Yowie researcher Andrew McGinn told the Northern Territory News yesterday the dog’s death could be the work of the Bigfoot-like beast.

“The way the guy’s dog was killed was typical of a Yowie,” he said.

“I know it sounds fanciful but over the past 100 years, dogs get killed or decapitated and people report feeling watched, having goats stolen or seeing some tall hairy thing beforehand.”

But Tim the Yowie Man, a former economist who turned his hand to Yowie research after spotting a hairy beast on a bushwalk 15 years ago, said the Yowie was not to blame.

“I’m very concerned that the Yowie is being incorrectly portrayed as an aggressive creature that is posing a danger to people’s pets,” he said.

“In over 150 years of Yowie reports all over Australia, I’ve never heard of a Yowie ripping an animal’s head off.

“It is my understanding that in this case there is no evidence that proves a Yowie is responsible for biting the head off a seven-month-old puppy.

“To speculate, with a lack of conclusive evidence to back the claims, that the decapitation of this poor puppy was the work of a Yowie is alarmist.”

The Canberra cryptonaturalist said there had only been a handful of Yowie reports from the Territory in the past 15 years.

“One turned out to be a hoax, another turned out to be a hairy naked human running across the Stuart Highway near Alice Springs and the other was of spurious origin,” he said.

Source: ntnews

BENTON COUNTY- In October 2003, the small town of Decatur on the western side of Benton County found itself with a new resident.

Normally, a new neighbor would not cause any kind of stir. After all, people pack up and move every day, but this time things were different.

Although a little shy, the new neighbor soon brought news crews and myth debunkers from all around into the tiny town as the local gossip began to circulate about just what the new guy looked like.

It did not take everyone long to realize that the new neighbor who had moved into the woods around Crystal Lake was, indeed, Bigfoot.

“We had some pretty interesting calls on it,” Decatur Chief of Police Terry Luker said. “I had one lady call me and I tried to explain to her that it was not a Bigfoot and that it was too small to be a Bigfoot.

“The lady stopped me and she said, ‘Well, you know, they have babies, too.”’ ery day she hears someone in the restaurant telling their own Bigfoot story.

“He stays right out there,” Mickey Metz of Gentry said as he pointed into the woods across Crystal Lake. “Some people still say they can hear him way out over there, but we never see him and I do not stay out after dark.”

Paul Austin of Decatur says he remembers the excitement the town went through when Bigfoot was first seen in 2003, but after about a week he did not hear any more about the new neighbor.

“I am not a believer,” Austin added.

Kim Strobel of Gravette, however, is a believer and with good reason.

“I believe in him. I have heard him,” Strobel said.

While working on a wild-game reserve in Winston, Ore., Strobel and a group of his coworkers heard Bigfoot’s howl. When Bigfoot entered the reserve, all of the animals - the lions, the tigers, the monkeys - began howling and hissing and getting extremely nervous in their cages, and then Strobel

The official stance on Decatur’s Bigfoot sightings in 2003 is that the monkey-like creature people were getting fleeting glances of around town was actually a baboon that had escaped from the local wilderness safari in nearby Gentry.

The first spotting of Bigfoot was on Hill Street, and it was not long before the police department was getting calls from citizens who had seen Bigfoot on the west side of Decatur, Luker said.

“It was a lot of fun. I have not heard of any sightings lately,” Luker said.

“He is still around. He still comes in for coffee in the morning,” Denise Trammell, owner of the Gallery Café in downtown Decatur, said.

“He is a little shy, so sometimes he has to come in before we actually open,” Trammell said, noting the café has a deal with Bigfoot to not take photographs of the being that is surrounded with mystery.

“He has a family now. He is a pretty nice guy,” Trammell said, noting that evheard what he believes was Bigfoot letting out a sound that he is not likely to ever forget, he said.

“It was a quiet night. You could hear the grasshoppers chirping and then you could hear just a strange howl and all of the lions started roaring and the monkeys started going crazy,” Strobel said. “The next day we went out looking for him, and never could find anything. But being around animals all my life, I can tell you that sound was like nothing else.”

The mystery of whether or not Bigfoot really exists lives on in Strobel’s mind.

“I have been in quite a few places and you always hear about these stories, but none of us know what all God has created,” Strobel said. “I can not say it was (Bigfoot). I can not say it was not. Two-thirds of the rumors out there are usually true, though.”

Source: nwanews

NORTHWEST COVE — Bloodshot eyes as big as saucers, a body coated in mossy hair, spinal protrusions along undulating bodies covered in scales 15 centimetres long. These are just some characteristics of the “denizens of the deep” spotted off the coast of Nova Scotia as recently as a few years ago.

Sea captains have seen them. Military men have seen them. And Andrew Hebda, curator of zoology with the Nova Scotia Museum, says there’s definitely something to these sightings of monsters and sea serpents.

The question is what?

Granted, he said, there’s no doubt some creatures were likely seen through the bottom of a rum bottle, “but the point is, they saw something.”

In 2003, Wallace Cartwright was in his lobster boat off Alder Point, Cape Breton, when he saw a sea serpent about eight metres long. It was the diameter of an oil drum and he followed it until it dove down deep and disappeared.

Two hundred years earlier, a woman by the name of Mrs. W. Lee saw a 30-metre sea monster off the coast of Cape Breton. “Its back was dark green and it stood in the water in flexuous hillocks and went through it with infectious noise,” says one account of her sighting.

Pretty enthralling stuff for Mr. Hebda, who is writing a book on these mysterious creatures of the deep.

He spoke at the community centre here on Sunday at an event hosted by the Athenaeum Society of Nova Scotia. “You’re in sea monster central in Nova Scotia,” he told them.

In 1833, five fellows were out fishing off Mahone Bay when they reported seeing a monster some 180 metres from their boat. They provided good detail despite the rum they had drunk.

It was about 31 metres long. “We saw the head and neck of some denizen of the deep, precisely like those of a common snake, in the act of swimming, the head so far elevated and thrown forward by the curve of the neck as to enable to see the water under and beyond it.”

There have been pockets of such sightings around the province, many of them quite similar despite the decades, if not centuries, that pass between them. And they tend to be in warmer waters, shipping channels and fishing grounds.

Many of them have been off the South Shore, as well as the Pictou area and Cape Breton.

Mr. Hebda is writing a book about sea monster sightings and has been inspired by the detailed accounts he’s collected. In 1975, Keith Ross was in his boat off Cape Sable Island with his son Rodney when a sight suddenly rose before them. “It had eyes as big around as saucers and bright red-looking. I mean, you could see the red in its eyes like they were bloodshot. It had its mouth wide open and there were two big tusks — I call them tusks — that hung down from its upper jaw.”

Mr. Ross roared his boat away from the grey, snake-like body as it passed astern.

The Mi’kmaq first recorded similar serpents in petroglyphs found at Kejimkujik National Park. The first documented account was by Nicolas Denys of a merman spotted in Canso Harbour in 1656. The first reported sighting in Halifax Harbour was of an 18-metre serpent in 1825.

The fishermen’s world revolves around things they see every day. Mr. Hebda said when they see something unusual, they want to know what it is. Sometimes the answer is quite innocuous. Often the truth will never be known.

For instance, Mr. Cartwright may well have seen an oarfish, also known as the king of the herring, when he was working off Cape Breton six years ago. “Do we know everything that’s out there? No, no we don’t. Have we seen everything that’s out there? No, now we haven’t,” but Mr. Hebda suspects there’s an explanation for pretty much every case — whether it’s a rare tropical fish brought north by warm currents or the distorted vision produced by the thick glass at the bottom of a bottle of spirits.

Mr. Ross hadn’t been drinking when he saw that tusked animal with the bloodshot eyes. But Mr Hebda said that’s also the year officials confirmed and photographed a walrus in the area.

“People see things, they try to figure out what they saw,” he said.

“Yes, they did see something. What is it? Therein lies the challenge. It’s a voyage of exploration to see what it is.”

Source: thechronicleherald