Monsters and Myths

This weekend, as Shore-bound travelers zip through the Pine Barrens, more than few will peer into the vast repository of gargoyle-y evergreens and wonder:

Is there, or was there ever, a Jersey Devil lurking in those wierdo woods?

One hundred years ago, thousands of people believed.

“WHAT-IS-IT VISITS ALL SOUTH JERSEY” declared the front page of The Inquirer on Jan. 21, 1909 - above a photograph of “actual proof-prints of the strange creature.”

“Hooflike tracks” could be seen in the snow “in practically every block in Burlington city” - including rooftops - throwing “this section into a state bordering on panic.”

Even dogs were scared.

“Hounds put on the trail refused to follow the tracks, and, with bristling hair and the picture of terror, ran home,” the article stated.

Armed with shotguns, a party of young farmers near Jacksonville in Springfield Township followed the tracks for almost four miles - when they “mysteriously disappeared.”

The tracks, not the farmers.

A Gloucester man said the creature had wings two-and-a-half-feet long, four legs, a neck like a crane, a head like a collie and a horse’s face.

Two Maple Shade men agreed with the doglike head, but said it had long black hair and feet and hands like a monkey.

Some folks called the creature “the Flying Death.”

Not that any people died. Though some chickens and pets reportedly did.

Then, on Jan. 22, men with nets bagged the “docile” creature not in South Jersey, but in “the wilds of Fairmount Park,” according to a Jan. 23 Inquirer story.

A reporter coined the term “kangowing” for the creature, saying it seemed to be a cross between a kangaroo and an Australian water bird.

Soon, for 10 cents each admission, the public could see the caged “Leeds Devil . . . more fearsome than the fabled monsters of mythology!” at a museum at Ninth and Arch Streets.

The “fearsome” beast, though, looked like a happy dragon in a cartoony illustration on a handbill.

“Leeds Devil” was a reference to the legend that the monster was the 13th child born to Deborah Leeds in the early 1700s. Legends differ as to how humanlike the offspring was, and whether it fled into the Atlantic County woods when she died.

The “capture” was later declared a hoax - a kangaroo with fake wings, according to the Philadelphia Record.

But the sightings were so numerous, especially of mysterious hoofprints, that people still wonder if real creatures were afoot in late January and early Februrary of 1909.

Perhaps a flock of wild fowl was forced down by a weekend snowstorm, and their tracks were altered by subsquent rain, the Jan. 21 Inquirer article theorized.

An artist’s rendering published in the Philadelphia Bulletin showed a winged critter with jutting jaws.

Some have since seen a resemblance to a hammer-headed bat. Experts have discounted that idea, since these large fruit-eating bats live in Africa, and would have trouble surviving a South Jersey winter.

Maybe the Mr. Hope behind the hoax used bats fitted with funny shoes.

No one knows.

Animal authorities at the time said they could think of no winged species that matched the bizarre descriptions.

Great horned owls, which could attack other animals, and sandhill cranes, which have large wingspans and can make loud noises, also have been suggested over the years as possible explanations.

Since 1909, sightings have been sporadic.

Did “What-Is-It” disappear?

Perhaps, but the legend refuses to die.

As recently as two summers ago, a weird winged creature was spotted in Central Jersey, according to some accounts.

So as you’re driving by, keep looking.

And have that cellphone camera ready.

Source: philly.com

Tom Burnette is a man with a mission. He found his life’s calling unlooked for almost 20 years ago in the woods near Old Fort. That’s when he encountered Bigfoot.

Many people over the years have seen what they believed to be sightings or physical evidence of Bigfoot. But Burnette is different in one respect. The creature he saw came back. And, as it turned out, there was more than one. Indeed, he now believes, there’s a whole colony of them.

Where, exactly? He’s a bit guarded about exact locations, but said he sees the creatures “way up Curtis Creek, near the Parkway.”

What brings them back, again and again, to the woods Burnette haunts?

He has several guesses. For one, he believes a large community of them have lived in the area for a ling time. And because their home territory coincides with the woods he haunts, they have become familiar with him.

In other words, he has made peace with them. Although he says he has not come face to face with the reclusive creatures, he has found what he believed to be gifts left for him; mushrooms, meat, and other items harvested from the woods.

“They know I’m not out to hurt them, that I’ll protect them,” he said. “They’re used to me now.” That familiarity has led to several opportunities to observe them, at a distance, for more than just a few seconds, he said.

So how is it that more people haven’t seen them? Simply, he answered, because people tend to think of Bigfoot as a dumb beast, no smarter than a bear. In fact, the Bigfoot culture is well developed and they are highly intelligent creatures.

“They’re more aware of you than you are of them,” he said. “These are very alert creatures.”

After years of observation, Burnette believes the Bigfoot domesticates the wild animals of the forest the same way humans domesticated dogs, and for the same reasons.

“They use bear to hunt,” he explained. “They hunt in groups.”

Earlier this spring, Burnette got what he believes is confirmation of this theory, when he came very close to a hunting party accidentally.

“I felt sure something was watching me,” he said of one day’s excursion into the woods. “I turned around and felt eyes on me.” He didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, he explained, but long years of romping the woods has taught him the limitations of the human eye in the dense foliage.

He raised his cell phone and took pictures of the woods in front of him. It was only after he had detail shots printed at maximum enlargement that he saw the evidence he had in hand.

One eerie picture shows what appears distinctly to be a humanoid face, with flat, wide mouth and heavy brows. The face’s left are the shapes of what could be faces of bears or other beasts.

Burnette was chilled to think he had come so close to a hunting party, but said that, by this time, if the Bigfoot had wanted to hurt him they could have done so. The fact he has remained unharmed is evidence, he said, that the Bigfoot mainly hunts small game.

This latest close encounter is not the first. Several years ago, he continued, he found what he believed to be an infant Bigfoot left on his property. Why would a mother Bigfoot abandon her baby?

Burnette suspects that the baby may have been in danger from a male. He said in the primate kingdom, a male will sometimes kill an infant in order to get the female to go into heat. Holding the infant, he made what he now regards as a great mistake.

“I took it back into the woods,” he said, “and left it, hoping she would come back for it.” Sadly this did not happen. Days later, he found the skull of the young creature; whether it had been eaten by dogs or killed by an adult Bigfoot, he didn’t dare speculate.

He explained that he realized this was the evidence the world had been waiting for. He photographed the skull, then sent it to Texas laboratory for DNA analysis. Today, he is upset about the lab’s progress, and speculated he might have to go to court to get the thing back into his possession.

Meanwhile though, two pictures he shot of the skull are featured in the book he published a while back about his observations. Entitled “Natures Secret Agents,” the book is a diary account of his experiences and observations over the years. Many sightings are detailed, along with the occasional exchange of gifts and, sometimes, terrifying harassment by less friendly members of the Bigfoot community.

Burnette has learned to keep his distance. He tries to get the best photographs he can, but does not ever wish to put them on the defensive. The size, strength and cunning of the creatures means no human would stand a chance. He feels safe so long as he maintains a healthy respect for the Bigfoots’ privacy and space.

He said that several years ago an Indian chief told him the Bigfoot is the guardian of the forest and all the animals in it. After several years observation, he is inclined to agree.

“They don’t want anything to do with us,” he said, because they know the violent ways of Man. “I want to share what I have learned so that we can understand them, not fear them, and respect them and their home.”

Source: morganton.com

Two physicists have published an academic paper where they demonstrate, by virtue of geometric progression, that vampires could not exist, since they would almost immediately deplete their entire food supply (a.k.a, all of us).

If you’ve ever read Salem’s Lot (or seen the lame Starsky and Hutch-era miniseries adaptation starring David Soul), then you know that after a vampire decides to settle in your town, the undead begin to multiply at an alarming rate (he bites two friends, who bite two friends, and so on, and so on…).

Putting aside for a moment the issue of how that would impact neighborhood property values, this phenomenon raises an even more pressing question: If vampires are indeed living (unliving?) among us, then shouldn’t we have seen an undead population explosion by now?

Fortunately, our best minds are on the case. Physicists Costas Efthimiou and Sohang Gandhi’s paper “Cinema Fiction vs. Physics Reality” offers a full explanation.

Efthimiou and Gandhi conduct a thought experiment: Assume that the first vampire appeared on January 1, 1600. At that time, according to data available at the U.S. Census website, the global population was 536,870,911. Efthimiou and Gandhi calculate that, once the Nosferatu feeding frenzy began, the entire human race would have been wiped out by June 1602 (thus forever changing the course of history by preventing the invention of the slide rule eighteen years later).

The physicists note:

Another philosophical principal related to our argument is the truism given the elaborate title, the anthropic principle. This states that if something is necessary for human existence, then it must be true since we do exist. In the present case, the nonexistence of vampires is necessary for human existence. Apparently, whomever devised the vampire legend had failed his college algebra and philosophy courses.

Oooh, snap! But, this gauntlet had been barely thrown down before it invited a rebuttal from mathematician Dino Sejdinovic. In his article, “Mathematics of the Human Vampire Conflict” (Math Horizons, November 2008) Sejdinovic faults Efthimiou and Gandhi’s logic, since they have not “accounted for the birth-rate of non-vampires and death-rate of vampires (actually the death-death-rate since they are already dead, but when they die again they should stay dead but stop being living) due to close encounters with stakes, garlic and holy water.” Moreover, “vampires are presented exclusively as greedy consumers: a rational strategy of managing their human resources is not considered.”

Here, Sejdinovic cites the pioneering research conducted by Austrian mathematicians Richard Hartl and Alexander Mehlmann, who published the landmark 1982 paper, “The Transylvanian Problem of Renewable Resources,” later followed up by “Cycles of Fear: Periodic Bloodsucking Rates for Vampires” (Journal of Optimization Theory and Application, December 1992). Hartl and Mehlmann argue that vampires would never be stupid enough to deplete their entire food supply, and by applying the Hopf-Bifurcation Theorem (don’t ask), they demonstrate how vampires can adopt an optimal “cyclical bloodsucking strategy.”

However, there is a serious flaw in the Hartl and Mehlmann model: The assumption that human beings would be docile prey. Their research provoked an outraged response from economist Dennis Snower, who in his article “Macroeconomic Policy and the Optimal Destruction of Vampires” (The Journal of Political Economy, June 1982), declared:

One wonders what conceivable interest the authors could have had in helping vampires solve their intertemporal consumption problem. The implicit assumption of the Invisible Hand (or Fang)-whereby vampires, in pursuing their own interests, pursue those of human beings as well-is of questionable validity. The study by Hartl and Mehlmann is not concerned with the macroeconomic implications of blood-sucking behavior modes. Nor does it consider the policy instruments whereby human beings can protect themselves from vampires. Instead, humans are modeled as passive receptacles of blood whose cultivation and harvest are left to vampire discretion.

Hooyah! Snower argues that the mortal world can manage its resources in a manner that keeps the undead population in check, while simultaneously promoting long-term economic growth:

A transfer of labor services from the widget sector to the stake sector reduces human welfare at present but may raise welfare in the future (since an increase in stake production reduces the vampire population and thereby increases the future labor force whereby future widgets may be produced).

Still, I’m not entirely confident in Snower’s conclusions-not least because his complex mathematical proof indicates that the complete destruction of vampires would not be “socially optimal.” (And you wonder why economics is known as the dismal science?)

In fact, all of these models rest upon the assumption that vampires are at the top of the undead food chain. Who says that the blood-sucking population is not kept in check by something that preys on vampires? Time to consult the zoology journals.

Source: io9.com

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

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

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

The beast lives on - that is the opinion of Falmouth man John Ostins, who is the latest in a line of people claiming to have seen the town’s mysterious ” beast.”

Mr Ostins, who is studying boat building at Falmouth Marine School, contacted the Packet to say that, at the risk of sounding “daft” he had also seen something resembling the unusual creature first revealed on the Packet website thepacket.co.uk and featured in the paper that week.

At the time Falmouth Watersports Centre worker Sam Bradbury claimed to have seen an animal that resembled a cross between a lion, a fox and a kangaroo.

Mr Ostins, from Tregenver Road, claims to have seen the beast in the second week of January - but has been too embarrassed to come forward until now.

He had been walking his dog Oggy on the coastal path between Swanpool and Maenporth at around 5pm when his pet started barking loudly ahead before going “absolutely ballistic” with his shackles up.

Mr Ostins said: “Just as we rounded the bend in the path I briefly saw up ahead a weird looking animal hopping into a gorse bush. I didn’t see it for long, but I can say that it was jet black with a long, bushy tail like I’d imagine a racoon to have, and bigger in size than my Labrador. It also seemed to be moving on two hind legs.”

Oggy went to the bush where the creature rushed to but, unusually, appeared reluctant to go in and look for the animal, which then disappeared.

“It sounds so far fetched and unbelievable that for weeks I kind of made myself believe that it was a dog or something and I completely dismissed it, until I saw the articles in the paper,” added Mr Ostins.

Source: falmouth packet