Monsters and Myths

IN SEARCH for the most elusive creature on earth, popularly known as Mande Burung in Garo Hills, History Channel came down all the way from USA to film a documentary on the series ‘Monster Quest’. This is for the first time that History Channel has filmed such a story in India.

The writer-producer, Bill William Prouty, renowned Primatologist, Esteban Sarmiento led the team along with cameraperson Aaron Acktenberg and Eli Ljung. Sarmiento have spent years researching the Bigfoot of North America and studied apes and primates of Africa.

The team visited Chokpot, Silkigre, Siju, Rongsu and Rongrigittim villages and interviewed eyewitnesses and villagers, who had encountered the monster giant. They also visited Nokrek National Park, and other adjoining areas where the Mande Burung is believed to have sighted.

Sarmiento, the accompanying Primatologist, examined the eyewitness reports, collected evidences and animal movements from the deep dark forests of Garo Hills.

The camera crew was fully equipped with various types of cameras and electronic gadgets including solar powered motion activated cameras, GPRS based digital still camera, GPS - global positioning system, high definition professional broadcast cameras, animal scent baits, electronic animal baits, etc.

Eminent personalities from Garo Hills and experts on issues related to Garo Hills Dr Milton M. Sangma, Llewellyn R. Marak and others were interviewed. “We are happy with the scenic beauty of Garo Hills, and the hospitality and friendliness of the Garo people,” said the producer Bill William Prouty, satisfied with the shoot.

The Centaur Adventure Team accompanied the History Channel for the filming. Dipu Marak, a Mande Burung enthusiast said, “We have provide the channel with all the video tapes of the earlier sighting, photographs, bone samples, few strands of suspected hair sample and blood sample for DNA testing and identifications.”

merinews.com/catFull.jsp?articleID=15720349

A SKELETON exhumed from a grave in Venice is being claimed as the first known example of the “vampires” widely referred to in contemporary documents.

Matteo Borrini of the University of Florence in Italy found the skeleton of a woman with a small brick in her mouth (see right) while excavating mass graves of plague victims from the Middle Ages on Lazzaretto Nuovo Island in Venice .

At the time the woman died, many people believed that the plague was spread by “vampires” which, rather than drinking people’s blood, spread disease by chewing on their shrouds after dying. Grave-diggers put bricks in the mouths of suspected vampires to stop them doing this, Borrini says.

The belief in vampires probably arose because blood is sometimes expelled from the mouths of the dead, causing the shroud to sink inwards and tear. Borrini, who presented his findings at a meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in Denver, Colorado, last week, claims this might be the first such vampire to have been forensically examined. The skeleton was removed from a mass grave of victims of the Venetian plague of 1576.

However, Peer Moore-Jansen of Wichita State University in Kansas says he has found similar skeletons in Poland and that while Borrini’s finding is exciting, “claiming it as the first vampire is a little ridiculous”.

Borrini says his study details the earliest grave to show archaeological “exorcism evidence against vampires”.

newscientist.com/article/mg20126985.200-vampire-discovered-in-

mass-grave.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news

Villages infested with vampire bats are one thing. But Nicaragua has its own folklore of blood-sucking monsters. From tales of the infamous chupacabras — the mythical alien, kangaroo, batdog that feeds on the blood of goats and chickens — to the lesser-known comelenguas, an unseen beast that feeds on the tongues of sleeping cattle, most Nicaraguan farmers can hold their own when it comes to telling vampire stories around a campfire. But, perhaps just like The X-Files, there could be an element of truth to some of the legends.

In 2002, when the chupacabras was supposedly terrorizing a rural farming community outside the colonial city of Leon, a former government vampire hunter told the local press that the real blood-sucking culprit was a giant vampire bat with a 5-ft wingspan, which he claims to have once caught in the northern mountains of Nicaragua.

Bat experts and other vampire hunters insist there’s no way a vampire could grow that big, but zoologist Bill Schutt says the hunter could have caught the Vampyrum spectrum, a monstrous carnivorous bat found in Nicaragua. The Vampyrum spectrum is an extremely rare predator with fierce teeth and a three-foot wing span. But, Schutt notes, it’s not a real blood feeder, despite its name.

Still, there was once a true giant vampire bat and some experts think that creature of the late Pleistocene, the Desmodus draculae, may still be alive today in some remote corner of the world. Nicaragua perhaps? Unlikely, Schutt says, but not impossible. “I’d jump up and down if one were discovered today,” Schutt said. The farmers of Nicaragua, however, may not be as happy.

time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1882097,00.html

It seems so long ago that a couple of chancers from the state of Georgia declared that they had found Bigfoot. And it seems almost as long ago that it was discovered that they had merely purloined a gorilla suit and stuck it in a freezer.

However, one of the most renowned naturalists in the world, Sir David Attenborough, said this weekend that he still believes it might be out there.

Appearing with British talk show host Jonathan Ross, Sir David, the man whose whispering voice has never disturbed even the most skittish bird, said, “I’m baffled by the Abominable Snowman–very convincing footprints have been found at 19,000 feet. No-one does that for a joke.”

I find myself on my knees and differing. Perhaps people might not do it only for a joke, but, as the Georgian scoundrels, Messrs. Dyer and Whitton, proved, you might be suppressing a giggle as you’re reaching for a large wad of paper money.

However, if Sir David believes that it’s out there, someone should really grab a few of the brightest and most underemployed enthusiasts around, and hike the Himalayas until they find the hairy beast.

Perhaps we could have a reality show in which two sets of teams are given a seemingly impossible task, and the first to achieve its goal wins $5 million and a mortgage.

I have a name for it: “Bin Laden or Bigfoot?” I think that I’ll call Fox right now and pitch it.

news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10184835-71.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

Sir David Attenborough believes there is ‘very convincing’ evidence that yetis exist.

Speaking on Friday Night With Jonathan Ross, the revered wildlife expert said: ‘I’m baffled by the Abominable Snowman - very convincing footprints have been found at 19,000ft.

‘No-one does that for a joke. I think it’s unanswered.’

The yeti is an ape-like creature said to inhabit the Himalayan region of Nepal and Tibet.

A photograph of a mysterious footprint, rumoured to be that of the yeti was taken in the Menlung Basin in the Himalayas in 1951.

A team of mountaineers travelled to the region on a reconnaissance mission before attempting to conquer Everest for the first time, a feat achieved two years later.

Eric Shipton recorded the footprint, and Tom Bourdillon, passing on the evidence to his friend Michael Davies, wrote: ‘Dear Mick, Here are the footprint photos: sorry for the delay. We came across them on a high pass on the Nepal-Tibet watershed during the 1951 Everest expedition.

‘They seemed to have come over a secondary pass at about 19,500 ft, down to 19,000 ft where we first saw them, and then went on down the glacier.’

In 1954, the Daily Mail reported the discovery of hair specimens from what was said to be the scalp of a yeti.

Professor Frederick Woods Jones, an expert in human and comparative anatomy, failed to reach a conclusion, but said the dark brown hair was not from a bear or an anthropoid (manlike) ape.

Alleged sightings and debate has continued through the decades - but so far no-one has been able to produce a clear, definitive photograph of the world’s most elusive being.

Tibetan folklore has it that the yeti is nocturnal, whistles, and can kill with a single punch.

Investigators believe that at least two types of yeti exist: the dzu-teh (’big thing’), which is 7ft-8ft tall, and the nich-teh, which is 5ft-6ft.

Sir David also spoke about not being able to halt climate change.

He said: ‘We can never go back, there’s no doubt about that… it’s the speed at which we’re changing.

‘Before, it was thousands of years and now it’s decades… but we can slow down the rate at which we change.’

dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1157965/Yeti-evidence-convincing-says-wildlife-expert-Sir-David-Attenborough.html

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

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

I have never been one for having an interest in the unknown or the paranormal, but when someone you trust tells of an experience from their past, sometimes you have to give the benefit of the doubt. I was reading Your True Tales about a month ago and came across a story that took place in New Jersey on or about the area of Doris Dukes Farm. After reading it my jaw dropped because this story gave the one that was told to me some validity. My grandfather told me this story back in 1991, a few years before he passed away… and so it goes.

My grandfather worked from the late 1950s to the early ’70s as a landscaper on the Duke Estate in Somerset, N.J. When he told this story

to my sister and me, he was foggy when giving the exact dates, but he was still very sharp and explained it with incredible detail. My grandfather’s job was to manicure and care for the lawns in the north section of the property (whatever that meant) and other various duties. He said that in the summer of 1972, one August afternoon, he was told by the head groundskeeper that he would be working overtime and that he was needed because a shipment was being delivered from Wisconsin. They needed about eight men to unload a crate and to bring it into the garden area.

That night, the truck arrived and it was getting late. The men who were asked to stay for overtime were eager to get things done and over with and be on their way. When the truck pulled up, my grandfather said that the crate was about 8 feet tall and 5 feet wide. When he asked what was inside it, the one in charge said they were exotic trees.

What happened next was enough to make half of the team get up and walk off the job and not care about the consequences. When the men started pushing the crate off of the flatbed truck, a blood-curdling scream was unleashed from within the box. All of the men let go of their grip and the crate fell to the floor. As everyone jumped back, realizing that this was anything but a tree, the head keep did all he could to save the contents’ real identity and said that there was a black bear inside of it.

While the men were regaining their composure, most of the helpers walked off the job. They said they didn’t want to get hurt or mauled dealing with a wild animal without the proper safety equipment, so off they went, including my grandfather. Only two men stayed to finish what they were asked, and so this is what was told to my grandfather.

The two remaining men managed to get the load onto a dolly and then drag it into the garden compound. While guiding the crate down the main path, balance was lost and the crate came off the wheels. The hard hit was enough to crack the side of the crate and loosen the side panel, which fell off and exposed the contents. What the two remaining men witnessed that night was enough to make them seek employment elsewhere.

What I am telling you was how it was told to me. Inside the crate sat a creature that had the shape of a man, but was anything but a man. They couldn’t give a height measurement since the creature was in a sitting position, but they said it was huge. It had the shape of a man with a very large frame, only it was covered with black hair. The “creature” was strapped down and had shackles on his legs and feet and arms. The face didn’t look like a man, but had some human features. The workers said it looked more like a monkey or a gorilla. The hair was extremely long and dirty. At one point, one of the men said they thought that this “thing” was trying to speak or communicate with words, but all it did was keep on drooling. They were under the impression that this creature was heavily sedated because it couldn’t keep his head up straight; it rested its head on its chest.

A couple of inches away from the creature’s head was an empty water bottle nailed to the wall. On the other side of the creature was an IV stand connected to the wall and stuck to its arm. It might have been used to feed this “creature” during its transport. One of the oddest parts to this story was that my grandfather was told that this creature was sitting on a rocking chair! I could never understand this. After thinking about it, though, I think it was maybe to prevent this “thing” from getting cramps during the move. They also said that the odor was overpowering and enough to make anyone pass out — the combined smells of urine, waste and body odor was rank.

My Grandfather stuck by this story until the very end. About two weeks before he passed away, my sister reminded me to bring it up again and confront him, which I did. There was no need to go over the story again because we both knew how it went. I just asked him, “Papa, remember the crate you had to move in Jersey?” He just looked at me, smiled and said, “Of course.” I said, “Did you embellish at all?” He said, “No, there was no reason to. It happened the way I said it happened.” I said, “Because now would be the time to tell me.”

He looked at me and said, “You want to know if I embellished the story. The truth is that I am guilty of the opposite.” There was so much that I left out… the story was just the beginning. Remember something, I worked there for two more years after that. There are things that a young mind should not hear.” I said, “But I am not a child anymore. I am sure I can handle what it is that you have to say.”

Grandfather said, “Tomorrow I will finish the story. Come back tomorrow.” But there was no tomorrow. Grandfather passed away at 2 a.m. at New York Hospital. This is a true story.

Story Told by :  Stephen Wagner