Seeing Cryptids: The Problems

HAHAHA That thread's a riot.

Since God created Bigfoot, and since there's no God, it follows that there's no Bigfoot.

Ergo, if Bigfoot exists, he has to be an atheist.
 
Nessie's First Sighting a Hoax for Money?

Most sources discussing the Loch Ness Monster erroneously mention an alleged "earliest sighting" of the monster by St. Columba in 565. This is a hopeful but weak attempt to give Nessie a history before 1933. It is true that an ancient text, a biography of Columba, mentioned that he turned away (by supernatural command) a water beast in river Ness. The book predated secular history by centuries and was filled with wondrous events and animals. It should be discarded by Nessie researchers as a meaningful source.

It is generally believed that the Loch Ness Monster became "known" and known to the world during an eyewitness flap in 1933 and carried over to 1934. The first sighting was reported in April of 1933 in a local newspaper. Here is an accounting of the sighting by Mr. and Mrs. MacKay, with the newspaper headline "Strange spectacle on Loch Ness -- what was it?: http://www.lochnessinvestigation.com/history.html

Two things to note. Folks around the loch were puzzled and the published responses of folks attributed the sighting to mundane causes, like otters, fish, or ducks, etc. There appeared to be no monster tradition.

The newspaper article was written by the loch's water bailiff, Alex Campbell. One wonders why he mention a monster tradition unless he was referencing various superstitious beliefs in the Highlands, such as about the supernatural "water horse." Or, did he have another motive?

Henry Bauer wrote a book, The Enigma of Loch Ness, a book weighing both sides of the monster issue, and included an under-appreciated tibit of information.

Bauer remembered he had read a biographical novel where a journalist said he had created the Loch Ness Monster. Bauer tracked down this author and received this letter (edited down by me for space):

In the early 1930s I, with two young partners, ran a publicity service in London. One of the partners was a native of Lossiemouth....not far from Loch Ness. On returning from a holiday he brought us a small account. A group of hotels catering to tourists in that area wanted publicity and offered a fee of 50 pounds. We accepted...Around the same time we were offered a more important account by [a realtor]...in the Okanagan Valley of Britsh Columbia... We were told and I am inclined to believe that he invented the Ogopogo, a legendary creature inhabiting Lake Okanagan. .... The Lossiemouth member of the firm then told us that for centuries a legendary creature was supposed to dwell in Loch Ness. We had never heard of it. At that time our "board room" was the saloon bar of a pub just off Trafalgar Square and over several pints of beer we became midwives of the reborn Loch Ness Monster. All we had to do was to arrange for the Monster to be sighted. This we did and the story snowballed. Thousands went north to see it and see it they did. It was, of course, pure hokum. The unwitting parent was the Ogopogo.

He is probably referencing the McKays' "sighting." Did Cambell know about the scam and was paid to write it up? Or, was he unsuspecting and merely, and fortuitously, relating the sighting to superstitous rumors of something inhabiting the dark waters of Ness?

In any event, Rupert Gould, a sea-serpent enthusiast and author, was the first to investigate the 1933 monster scene at the loch. He found that the McKays were the lessees of the Drumnadrochit Hotel, near Urquhart Bay!
 
My mom and I visited Loch Ness and stood there at Urq. Castle for a bit, gazing out onto the waters, looking for Nessie. I'll be darned if my native skepticism gradually turned into a semi-state of belief, as that darn lake is so deep and mysterious.

Alas, in spite of the momentary belief, nothing appeared, and I soon recovered and we moved on.
 
Sonny2,
When I was a crypto-zoo kid, Loch Ness was my mystical mecca. Never did go, but always wanted to. Even dreamt about it.

I understand it can be a foreboding place, with dark waters, often overcast skies, ancient castles, peat, etc.

Nessie enthusiasts like to believe the Monster had a history prior to 1933. They cite a handful of accounts of Nessie sightings before 1933. Almost all, however, were told, or remembered, during the 1933-34 flap.

While there are references to some general unease and superstition surrounding Ness (and other lochs) through the years before 1933, such references are better explained by superstitions like the following, and not a real animal:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelpie
 
My mom's a Scot, and they say Scots make some of the world's best engineers, but she seemed the opposite of that, not very analytic. I don't think she believed in Nessie, but she sure believed in ghosts. This belief never did seem to bother her any in the sense of being afraid. We traipsed all over Scotland and the Orkneys and Hebrides etc. and visited many old castles and she would tell me the tales of the ghosts in each one until I was looking over my shoulder all the time, even though I don't believe in them. LOL

I think she really influenced my skepticism, as I would always argue with her that such things can't possibly exist. I probably got a bit better at thinking about it analytically because of her, but she would be peaceful as a baby while I'd be scared stiff. Ironic.
 
Beautiful Scotland seems to have two encouragements. It has its strong superstitions, yet it is the home of David Hume and the Scottish Enlightenment.

Enlightenment and endarkenment.
 
That Ogopogo video

B-but what about the size? Sure the beaver picture they compared it to looked about the same size but what were the distances between the two pictures? They said it looked fifteen feet, not four feet.

It looks just like a beaver except bigger and more snake like! Why is everybody ignoring the simplest, Occam's Razor-approved explanation that it is a GIANT SNAKE LIKE BEAVER?! One that lifted it's head more than normal beavers. I mean if you're an honest seeker of new species, and you practically admit that it looks like a beaver except for being a bit bigger . . .

"If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck and is just a bit too big . . . it must be a reptile"?
 
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Years before some cryptozoologists decided Bigfoot is native fauna of Texas, we had "goatman." Goatman was a satyr-like creature that was casual folklore; an imaginary creature we scared each other with while camping out, even if the camp was in a friend's backyard. In 1969, the goatman made the local newspapers over a series of alleged "real" encounters at nearby Lake Worth. Here is a reproduced article: http://lake-worth-monster.blogspot.com/2007/12/fishy-man-goat-terrifies-couples-parked.html

When I looked at this article I was surprised (and shouldn't have been) that the article was written by Jim Marrs. Marrs years later would write Kennedy assassination conspiracy books and then write pro-UFO books. A red flag?

Next issue of the newspaper is even more sensational, and the "monster" is being converted from the original "goatman" into an albino ape: http://lake-worth-monster.blogspot.com/2007/12/police-residents-observe-but-cant.html

Eventually, the Lake Worth Monster became a Bigfoot or North American Ape in the crypto-zoo lit., and highly documented (because of the number of people who claimed to see the thing over weeks time.)

Someone even took a picture of the creature: http://texascryptidhunter.blogspot.com/2009/08/forty-summers-ago-fort-worth-texas-was.html

Obviously, the picture is unimpressive. Even the kid who took the picture thinks it was a hoax: http://www.bigfootencounters.com/creatures/lake_worth.htm

The partial solution to this monster story is found here: http://www.tpwmagazine.com/archive/2003/oct/legend/

Putting it all together, it suggests that the Lake Worth Monster was manufactured by a series of loosely related events. Some kids scared by pranksters, other kids acting like kids and mistaken for a tire-tossing monster, someone else running around in an ape suit or old rug and caught on camera, bobcats and possibly even a monkey, etc.

Yet, in cryptozoology, the events in 1969 around Lake Worth are cataloged as evidence of a species of animal unknown to science.
 
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I discovered this weekend that my kids and their friends have been trying to outscare each other with tales of "Shadowman". It seems that the comic book character (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadowman_(comics)) has morphed into some kind of boogeyman/cryptid thing for this next generation. They told me that Shadowman is really tall and skinny, all black but he has a white mask of some kind, and that he lives in the woods and steals children. So their Shadowman kind of wears the same outfit as the comic character, but that's apparently where the similarities end.
 
The Shrike said:
I discovered this weekend that my kids and their friends have been trying to outscare each other with tales of "Shadowman". It seems that the comic book character (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadowman_(comics)) has morphed into some kind of boogeyman/cryptid thing for this next generation. They told me that Shadowman is really tall and skinny, all black but he has a white mask of some kind, and that he lives in the woods and steals children. So their Shadowman kind of wears the same outfit as the comic character, but that's apparently where the similarities end.
Click to expand...

Sounds similar to Slender Man, apparently a created entity from a web page of faux paranormalism. It has taken on a life of its own.

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/slender-man
 
jerrywayne said:
Sounds similar to Slender Man, apparently a created entity from a web page of faux paranormalism. It has taken on a life of its own.

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/slender-man
Click to expand...

Yes - my kids straightened me out last night but you beat me to the punch in correcting my error. Thanks! It is Slenderman they talk about.

(On the plus side, I've now got them quite interested in the Shadowman comics, which seem pretty cool to me!)
 
Goatman and High Weirdness

This post is not about a specific cryptid sighting. Instead, it relates to the deep fringe in which belief in cryptids may be found germinating

Here is the Prince of Woo on the Goatman of White Rock Lake, Dallas.
http://www.mania.com/coming-goatman_article_112524.html

Since I live down the road (Northwest Highway, to be exact) from White Rock Lake, and have visited it many times, from childhood to old age, I had to chuckle at Redfern's attempt to make the lake seem sinister. It is a beautiful, urban lake. Probably the scariest thing about the lake is the presence of coyotes, but they seem to be everywhere in Dallas. (For instance, I've seen a coyote at my place of employment, in an industrial park, during daylight hours.)

Redfern is not a cryptozoologist, by his own reckoning, and it is hard to say exactly what he does. The best I can think of is, he is a purveyor of claptrap, or high weirdness, or alternative realities, or whatever. His MO is always the same: here he quotes a woman who he says saw the Goatman recently, doesn't give any more information than a bare statement alleged by the lady, and then he goes off cocked in half manner about the god Pan, etc!

Apparently, though, Goatman as a bipedal hairy monster is drifting away from popular consciousness (or sub or un): http://catierhodes.com/2012/01/06/the-goatman-of-texas/ I speculate that Goatman has been superseded by Bigfoot, an on-the-surface more plausible entity. In my teenage years, people around here heard about Goatman; Bigfoot, not so much (unless you read True Magazine, or Ivan Sanderson). Now, the star power is reversed.

I tried to google Sandy Grace's sighting that Redfern cites. I found more high weirdness: http://www.richmondmastering.com/blog/baseball-can-be-game-rewards-clever This is a blog that has (literally) oddly mixed messages, including the information brought up by Redfern. Here too: http://www.fraternitiesonline.com/c...-in-our-childhood-patterning-and-conditioning There are other sites in this vein.

Anyone know what-in-the-hey is going on here? I'm figuring the explanation is known to everyone but me.
 
Centaur Sighting

As someone above pointed out, cryptozoology mostly seems less interested in the possible existence of such things as a new species of deer or mouse than it is in Monsters that excite the imagination.

Zoologist (and cryptozoologist) Karl Shuker has written several books and articles about "mystery animals." Some of his stuff is interesting, even if unsensational. But then, he is also prone to slide into the deep end of the Fortean pool.

In his book titled, FROM FLYING TOADS TO SNAKES WITH WINGS, Shuker records a couple of centaur sightings. Here is the first: Margaret Johnson and John Ferrell had been driving past the estate of Lord Dillon near Drogheda, in County Louth, when they were forced to brake sharply. In the road, just up ahead of them, stood an extremely large animal with a horse-like body. Looking out of the window, Johnson at first thought that the creature was indeed a horse----until it turned to look at her. Then she screamed in absolute horror, for she could see only too clearly that it had the face of a man! (p.114)

The thing had not an ordinary human face; instead, its eyes bulged grotesquely, its skin was hairy, and its mouth was grimacing in a hideous evil leer.(p.114) This Black Beauty blocked the road for almost two minutes, then vanished, and Johnson and Ferrell fled away in the car, very, very scared.

The second: While appearing on a British TV show, Shuker participated in a viewers' participation call-in segment. One of the callers was Nicky Knott, who claimed that while driving home along a back road in King's Lynn (near the Norfolk-Linconshire border) one evening a couple of years earlier, her husband saw what he initially thought was a horse or deer, standing at the right-hand side of the road. As he approached, however, he could plainly see that although it did have a horse's body and legs, its face was that of a man!(p.115) Like the other story, the eyewitness was scared shine-less and fled away in his car.

Shuker, sounding like fellow Fortean Nick Redfern, offers this illumination: One of the most feared monsters of Irish mythology is the pooka, which often assumes the guise of a malevolent horse or pony. Is this what John Farrell and Margaret Johnson saw that night? But pookas are only imaginary, aren't they?(p.114) (Only bolding from Shukers' book.)

Apparently, Shuker believes Charles Fort is the equal to Charles Darwin.

I knew a young man from work who claimed to have had a centaur sighting. He was a rock musician and we were able to discuss a wide variety of subjects over the course of a year. He told me he had seen a centaur one sunny day in a city park. He said it was up ahead on the trail and looked like a horse with the upper body and head of a man where the horse's head and neck would be.

I don't think he was lying. And I don't think he saw a centaur. He said the centaur was only briefly glimpsed and then it moved around a bend and out of sight. He then explained what he probably saw. He said he moved cautiously ahead in order to see the creature again. He couldn't find it. Several yards later, he saw a man with no shirt walking a large dog!

Yet, even though he gave the detail about the man walking his dog, and even admitted that maybe that is what he saw, he still maintained that he saw what looked exactly like the images of centaurs he had seen in books and movies, and not like a man walking a dog!

If I had been an investigator for a Centaur Field Researchers group, I would have been impressed by the young man's sincerity. I would have set a few hours with him to be able to discern his trustworthiness. And I would have probably given him the green light.

However, I was able to spend many hours with him in the coarse of a year, and understood him better. He was taking medication (I never knew why, but I suspect for panic attacks.) He was heavy into the paranormal. For instance, he once brought up a recording for me to hear; he had recorded what he believed was a ghost call-out ("Help me!") recorded in a cemetary at night. I heard wind.

He told me about a very odd event that once happened to him. On a bright and sunny day, he saw a very large shadow move across the grass, and nothing seemed to be the basis for the shadow. He thought it was an ominous event. I told him it was nothing more than a quickly passing cloud momentarily blocking the sun's rays. We all have seen such "events" countless times in our lives, I mentioned.

To be blunt: my co-worker saw a centaur because he was fantasy prone. In today's ascending endarkenment, my friend's sighting might just make it into a cryptozoologist's book someday.
 
You know they have had very recent sightings of centaurs in Four Corners, but if they are happening anywhere else in the US, I haven't heard about them.

It's funny you should mention the bare chested man walking the large dog. I was at a friends house at dusk who happened to have a very loveable, but huge, Great Dane named "Lucy". Lucy was interferring with our studying by coming up to me while I was sitting at the dining room table and leaning on me. It was hard to ignore.

The owner put her out in the back yard until we were done and shortly thereafter we heard a knock on the door. This woman swore there was a deer in the back yard. We went to look and the only thing standing there was Lucy...LOLOL.

I 'm sure the man in the park was walking ahead of the dog and from behind it probably did look like a centaur if it was an Irish Wolfhound or a Great Dane.
 
I'm aware of a local report to the police that a lion was seen in a neighbor's shrubs. The investigating officer found a chow dog there, taking in the shade.

Last year, in early morning downtown Dallas, there was a report of a tiger seen going down an alleyway! The authorities never found a tiger and assumed a bobcat had come up from the river bottoms.
 
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