Monsters and Myths

A part of the greater Cincinnati area, Loveland, Ohio today has a population of around 11,600 people. But some folks there might say that population count should include a weird two-legged creature with a face resembling a frog or lizard.
It was on cold, clear night 37 years ago this week that a police officer encountered what would become known as the Loveland Lizard.

On the night of March 3, 1972, a police officer was patrolling the streets of Loveland when he saw something lying in the middle of the road. To the officer, it looked like some kind of animal that had been hit by a car.
The officer got out of his patrol car to check it out. He intended to drag the poor animal over to the shoulder of the road until the local game warden could be called out and pick up the carcass. As he opened his car, the door made a noise that caused the creature to suddenly rise up. The officer suddenly realized that this was no deer or dog that had been hit by a car.

He later described it as a human-like creature with the face of a frog or lizard. It was about 4 feet tall and had a green leathery skin. The creature got up and took a crouched position, like that of a defensive lineman, and stared back at the officer. Its eyes were illuminated from the lights of the patrol car, according to a Web site.

Then, the creature began to hobble over to the nearby guardrail. It lifted its leg over the guardrail and while doing so, kept its lizard eyes fixed on the startled officer. As the creature went over the guardrail and down an embankment, the policeman fired a shot at it but missed. In no time, it was clean out of sight. Investigators believe it disappeared into the nearby Little Miami River.

Later that month, a farmer in Loveland also claimed to have seen the mysterious creature. Folks there remembered that these were not the first sightings of the Loveland Lizard.

The first claimed sighting happened in May 1955. At that time, a businessman said he saw three or four frog-faced creatures squatting under a bridge near Loveland. He described them as having wrinkles instead of hair on their heads and standing about 3 feet tall. He also said they had lopsided chests and wide mouths without lips, like frogs or toads. The businessman said they also left behind a strong smell of alfalfa and almonds, according to a Web site.

And just nine years ago, a tourist in Loveland happened to encounter the weird creature. In 2000, a person visiting Loveland on vacation reported seeing the Loveland Lizard on the way to his hotel. He described it as a 4-foot-tall creature that seemed to be part human and part lizard or frog. He said it had scaly skin, webbed hands and feet and was holding a wand-like stick.

The tourist tried to take a photo of the creature but he mistakenly shot off the flash from his camera, which scared it off. He then tried to call the local animal control officer but he couldn’t give them a full description and location because his cellphone’s battery went dead, according to a Web site.

mcdowellnews.com/content/2009/mar/04/mike-conleys-tales-weird-land-love—and-lizardmen

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

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

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

Is it a lion, a fox or even a kangaroo? A strange creature has been spotted roaming the Falmouth coastal path between Maenporth and Swanpool by a Falmouth woman who has contacted the Packet in a bid to find out what it was.

It was between 4pm and 5pm when Sam Bradbury left work and decided to go for a walk along the coastal path.

Halfway around she spotted something moving in the bushes, but was unprepared for what she says she saw.

She said: “I assumed it was a bird or maybe a dog being walked that was rustling the bushes. I stopped as I got nearer, when I realised it was neither.

“It was a little bigger than a dog and had the face of a cat with eyes that were glazed over and luminescent like a lion’s at night. It left when it saw me but appeared to only walk on two hind legs much like a kangaroo would and had behind it a bushy tail like a fox.”

Walking straight home after her “encounter,” Sam immediately drew a picture of the creature so she could remember every detail, in the hope that somebody else may have seen something similar.

falmouthpacket.co.uk/news/fpfalmouth/

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