The Dover Demon
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On April 21, 1977, three 17-year-old boys were driving through the Boston suburb of Dover, Massachusetts, at about 10:30 p.m. The driver, Bill Bartlett, saw in his headlights an animal creeping along a low stone wall by the roadside. At first he thought it was a cat or dog, but as he came closer he saw that it was like no earthly creature he'd ever seen.
Bartlett said it had a large head the size and shape of a watermelon, with no visible features except for two round, orange eyes. The rest of its body was thin and spindly, with long, extended fingers and toes that wrapped around the rocks of the stone wall as it walked. It was between three and four feet tall, with peach-colored, hairless skin.
After his quick glimpse, Bartlett asked his two friends if they saw what they'd just driven past. As it turned out, they had been talking to each other at the moment, and didn't see the creature. They persuaded Bartlett go back for another look, even though he was so frightened he didn't want to turn around. They found nothing when they went back. Bartlett then headed home and made drawings of what he had seen (one of which is shown here).
That report alone would make for a pretty good monster story, but then something else happened. About two hours after Bartlett's sighting and a little over a mile away, 15-year-old John Baxter was walking home from his girlfriend's house when he saw a small figure walking towards him on the same side of the road. Baxter thought it was a neighborhood boy he knew, and called out the boy's name. He got no answer. The two walked closer together until Baxter saw the other figure suddenly stop. It then ran off down a gully and climbed up to the opposite bank. Baxter followed and got his first good look at the creature, which he said had a large, round head, a thin body and long, grasping fingers and toes. Baxter watched the creature for a moment, then became scared and ran away from it.
Baxter also drew pictures of what he had seen. Soon word spread of his and Bartlett's sightings, and when their stories and drawings were compared, it seemed that the two had seen exactly the same creature. By all accounts, Bartlett and Baxter had never met before, and there was no reason to suspect that they had conspired together on a monster hoax.
The day after the sightings, Bartlett told his 18-year-old friend Will Taintor about what he had seen. That night, Taintor was driving 15-year-old Abby Brabham home around midnight. Brabham claimed to see a creature matching the same description crouching by the side of the road as they drove past -- even though she had reportedly not heard about what Taintor's friend had seen. Taintor also caught a fleeting glimpse of the creature.
Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman happened to be living in the Dover area at the time of these sightings, and was among the first investigators to tackle the case. It was he who named the creature the Dover Demon, a name that was picked up by the press and has stuck with the creature ever since. Interviews with the witnesses convinced Coleman that their encounters were genuine, despite their youth and the weirdness of what they had seen. It has been suggested that the animal they saw may have actually been a newborn horse, but that seems an unlikely solution. The Dover Demon remains one of the most baffling and compelling of all unexplained creature sightings.
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The Loveland Frog
and different perspective on
this story.
In May 1955, a man reported an unbelievably strange sight while driving home at 3:30 a.m. in Loveland, Ohio, northeast of Cincinnati. He claimed to have spotted three bipedal reptilian creatures standing by the side of the road, and pulled over to watch them from his car for about three minutes. One of the froglike beings carried some type of bar or wand above its head, and sparks were shooting out of the device. The driver notified Loveland police of what he had seen, although no evidence of the creatures was later found.
Almost twenty years later, in March 1972, an unnamed Loveland police officer was driving on Riverside Road at about 1:00 a.m., traveling slowly because of ice on the road. Up ahead he saw an animal standing at the side of the road, which he first thought was a dog. As the cruiser's headlights fell on the animal, it rose upright from a crouching position, showing itself to be three or four feet tall with leathery skin and a head like that of a lizard or frog. The beast looked at the officer momentarily before jumping over the guard rail and heading for the Little Miami River down below. The officer returned to the scene with another policeman a few hours later, and they found scrape marks on the embankment where something had apparently slid down to the river.
Two weeks later, another unnamed Loveland policeman reported a very similar encounter. Driving on the same road, he saw an animal lying in the middle of the pavement, which he thought was either dead or dying after being hit by a car. He got out of his car to clear the animal to the roadside, when suddenly the animal jumped up and the officer saw that it was a strange froglike creature. It began to flee, limping as if it were injured, and headed over the guard rail towards the river. The officer shot at the monster as it went down the embankment, but apparently did not hit it.
Neither of the officers filed an official report of the weird creature, but word of their sightings leaked to the press, and the modern legend of the Loveland Frog was soon spread far and wide. A farmer in Loveland also claimed to see a froglike creature in March 1972. Investigators began to speculate on a connection with the 1955 sighting of reptilian creatures, and the possibility of a secret race of lizard men inhabiting Ohio's rivers. Some have suggested that the officers may have actually seen a Nile monitor lizard or a large iguana, which can be over six feet in length. But if so, these reptiles would have to be escaped from a zoo or otherwise transplanted to the area, since they are not native to the region.
Abnormally large reptiles and reptile men have also been reported in other parts of the country, including the "Lizardman" of Wayne, New Jersey, and the "Giant Lizard" of Milton, Kentucky. The most celebrated successor to the Loveland Frog in recent years was the Lizard Man craze that swept Bishopville, South Carolina, in 1988. A man reported that a 7-foot reptilian beast with red eyes and three-fingered appendages chased his car along a country road at over 40 miles per hour. A large number of other sightings followed, and police officers discovered three-toed tracks.
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The Moth Man
Around midnight on November 15, 1966, two young couples were driving down a dirt road by an abandoned TNT plant near Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Roger and Linda Scarberry, and Steve and Mary Mallette, said they saw a strange gray figure standing near the plant's front door, with large red eyes that glowed in the dark and wings folded against its back. As the frightened couples sped away, the creature reportedly spread its wings and took off through the air in pursuit of the car. Even at speeds approaching 100 mph, the bizarre flying "bird" kept up with them. It made a loud, high-pitched shrieking noise, and it flew without flapping its wings. The creature followed them all the way down Highway 62 to the Point Pleasant city limits before flying away.
The four witnesses reported what they'd seen to the Point Pleasant police. All of them remarked on the strangeness of the creature's huge red eyes, which seemed to be set right into the monster's shoulders or chest, as though it had no head. They also noted that the eyes seemed to be "hypnotic."
The Scarberrys and the Mallettes were not alone in having a strange encounter that night. At about 10:30 that evening, Newell Partridge was watching TV at his home in Salem, West Virginia, about 90 miles from Point Pleasant. Partridge's television went blank with static, and he heard his hunting dog Bandit howling outside. Partridge went to look outside with a flashlight, and he saw two large red glowing circles that he thought were the eyes of an animal. Bandit went charging in the direction of the eyes, despite his master's calls for him to come back. The dog never returned.
The following day, Sheriff George Johnson announced the Scarberry and Mallette sightings to the press. Even though the descriptions uniformly seemed more similar to an owl or a big bird, a reporter named the creature "Mothman" after a villain on the then-current hit TV show, Batman.
On that night, November 16, Macella Bennett was getting into her car after visiting friends in Point Pleasant, when she saw a gray figure with red eyes rise up on the other side of her car. She said it was taller than a man and had eyes in the middle of its headless torso. Bennett was so terrified she dropped her baby daughter, and her friend Raymond Wamsley picked up the unharmed infant before they dashed back into the house. They said the creature peeked through the windows at them, but by the time police could get there, it was gone.
On 27 November, Connie Carpenter was driving home from church when she saw Mothman suddenly unfold its wings and fly at her windsheild. It veered off at the last minute, but gave Carpenter a close up veiw of its face, which she described as simply "horrible". She developed klieg conjunctivitus, a swelling, reddening, and itching of the eyes.
On February 27, 1967, Carpenter was walking to school when a man driving a 1946 Buick approached her. The man looked like he was in his mid-twenties, well tanned, and had no coat, despite the cold temperatures. He grabbed her arm, but she got away. The next day, she found a note on the porch written in pencil saying, "Be careful girl. I can get you".
Other strange people were encountered by local residents, and not only those who had been first-hand witnesses to the strange events. Reporters who were involved with investigating and researching the strange phenomena were targeted by odd people. Mrs. Mary Hyre was working at her office in the county courthouse when she was visited by a four and a half foot man with thick glasses, wearing only a short sleeved shirt despite the cold. The man asked her for directions to Welsh, West Virginia, but apparently already knew where it was and how to get there. He made Mrs. Hyre very uncomfortable, prompting her to summon the circulation manager. After continuing the conversation further, he picked up a ball point pen and marveled at it. When Mrs. Hyre told him he could have it he suddenly laughed and ran out the door. She later saw him watching her on the street, then jump in a car and speed away when she noticed him.
Journalist John A. Keel was the most famous investigater of the Mothman strangeness that plagued the region, and documented numerous sightings in his book, "The Mothman Prophesies". Keel arrived in Point Pleasant, West Virginia in December 1966, and shortly into his research, he was caugth up in the Mothman strangeness too. Keel was followed, and received bizarre phone calls which gave predictions of things to come.
The Mothman, UFO, MIB, and poltergiest phenomena ended abruptly after the 700 foot long Silver Bridge collapsed during rush hour traffic on December 15, 1967. Fourty-six people were killed. A woman who lived near the bridge said that two strange men were climbing around it the night before.
Many theories attempted to explain what exactly went on during the 13 months of terror in West Virginia. Among the more paranormal theories put forth were those of John Keel, who suggested that the mysterious creature and related phenomena was an energy beyond the comprehension of human minds. Keel beleived in "ultra-terrestrial" beings who manifested themselves as extraterrestrials, demons, ghosts, or gods. Less paranormal theories suggest the creature was a misidentified owl or Sandhill Crane (which also has large red patches around its eyes). Diehard skeptic simply write off the whole event as a product of mass hysteria.
SOURCES:
Keel, John A., The Mothman Prophesies
For a more mundane explanation of the Mothman case, it has been suggested that the witnesses may have seen sandhill cranes, a variety of large bird that can stand five or six feet tall. These cranes are not normally found in West Virginia, but could conceivably migrate there from Canada. Another theory is that the creatures were simply large owls. In any case, it would take a tremendous amount of panic and fear for any one person's mind to perceive a normal bird as this menacing creature, and a large number of people would have to share the same misconception. This is just one of the reasons why Mothman is one of the strangest phenomena not only in cryptozoology, but also in the entire realm of the unexplained.
Books:
The Mothman Prophecies by John A. Keel:
The Mothman Prophecies (2002) Movie
Synopsis:
Unexplained lights in the sky, strange noises and a bridge disaster are just a few in a series of strange events that transpire in a small West Virginia town. Psychic visions and winged alien creatures are supposedly at the root of these oddities. Hoping the occurences will be a link to his wife's mysterious death, reporter John Kline goes to investigate.
Paranormal thriller felled by genre's short life span
By Bob Strauss
Film Critic
You don't get many horror movies that are based on true events. "The Mothman Prophecies" should not inspire very many more.
A film that's better at creating unsettling atmosphere than at giving the viewer a clear notion of what the heck is going on, "Mothman" plays like a midrange "X-Files" episode. It's intelligent in its wayward way and admirable for its reluctance to indulge in cheap thrills when it can suggest mind-altering counter-realities instead. But there's a reason why "The X-Files" has finally been canceled; the extended heyday for this kind of stuff's eternally obscured night vision has passed.
The movie's basic concept has been taken from one of John A. Keel's nonfiction books of the same name. It recounts how, in the year or so leading up to a horrendous bridge collapse over the Ohio River in 1967, many residents of Point Pleasant, W.Va., reported visitations from a giant, mothlike creature that (and one presumes much of this recall was embellished after the disaster) seemed to be trying to communicate portents of doom.
The film was scripted by the intriguingly named Richard Hatem and directed by a music video maven, Mark Pellington. He is better with style than storytelling (his last feature was "Arlington Road").
Richard Gere plays modern-day Washington Post reporter John Klein. We first see him happily married to Mary (Debra Messing, from TV's "Will & Grace"), but during a winter drive a mothman comes at her (John doesn't see it), and soon after, she dies -- not from crash injuries, but from a brain tumor no one knew she had.
For months afterward, grieving John can just barely function at his job. Late one night, he starts driving south for a next-day interview in Virginia. When his car stalls out a few hours later, he discovers that he's in Point Pleasant, some 400 miles due west. It is never explained how he got there, or why, when he knocks on the man's door, the agitated Gordon Smallwood (Will Patton, adding nice extra levels of pathos to his usual, unhinged specialty) treats John like a serial harasser.
Soon, John is in the tender custody of local cop Connie Parker (Laura Linney). Having fielded many strange reports from her constituents, she welcomes the troubled reporter's aid in the growing number of investigations. This mothman thing, which calls itself Indrid Cold, is all over the place: alighting in backyard trees, contacting through waves of static on the phone, reflecting in motel room mirrors.
Then John thinks he sees Mary walking through town. He makes several frantic road trips to Chicago to interrogate a reluctant expert (Alan Bates) on the phenomenon. Bates' character is Alexander Leek, whose last name is the book author's spelled backward. For some mysterious reason, John's editors at the Post let him get away with all of this nonsense for as long as he wants.
The longer this film drones ominously on, the more we realize that Pellington really doesn't know where he ought to be taking it. There are moments of eerie elegance sprinkled along the way, and Gere and Patton find truly poignant ways of expressing their characters' very different descents into apparent madness.
But the main things "Mothman" leaves us with are memories of a lot of noise and swooping shadows. What it's all supposed to prophesy is anybody's guess.
"THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES"
Rated PG-13: violence,language, sex
The stars: Richard Gere, Laura Linney, Will Patton, Debra Messing, Alan Bates.
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Thylacine
Imagine a bizarre animal that appears to be half wolf and half tiger, with a head like a large dog's, hindquarters like a hyena's, and tiger stripes covering only the rear half of its body. Let's say this beast also has a long, rigid tail and a pouch like a kangaroo's, except that the pouch opens backwards. It sure sounds like a mythical mishmash of different species, similar to a jackalope or minotaur, but guess what? This creature is a real animal. Or at least, it was.
The thylacine was also known as the Tasmanian Tiger or Tasmanian Wolf, but it was neither feline nor canine. It was a carnivorous marsupial which was thought to be a distant relative of the opossum. Like so many marsupials, the thylacine was exclusively native to Australia. The species seems to have been driven off the continent's mainland about 12,000 years ago, probably because of a losing battle against dingoes. The thylacine found refuge on the island of Tasmania, which was once connected to the continent by a land bridge, and became the only place on Earth where thylacines were found.
In the 19th century, European settlers on Tasmania vilified the thylacine as a destructive menace responsible for slaughtering sheep and other livestock. Both government and private agencies offered bounties to have them killed. Thylacines were exterminated at a rapid pace, with the animal's strange appearance making it an easy target and public hatred fueling the hunt. By the early 20th century, the thylacine was nearly wiped out and no longer a significant threat, and yet the killing continued. Bounties on the animal were officially ended in 1909, but the thylacine was still being hunted down as late as 1930.
The people of Tasmania finally realized that the thylacine was virtually extinct. In 1933, the last known specimen was captured and kept at the Hobart Zoo, where it was named Benjamin. (A photograph of Benjamin appears on this page.) In 1936, Tasmania declared thylacines a protected species, but only two months later, Benjamin died in captivity. On that day, the thylacine officially became extinct.
But soon after Benjamin's death, the new sightings began. People began seeing thylacine in wild areas across Tasmania, engendering belief that the reports of its extinction was premature. Some experts are willing to concede that a small number of thylacines may survive in hiding somewhere in Tasmania, but despite a vast number of sightings and discoveries of alleged thylacine tracks, no concrete evidence of the species' survival there has yet been produced.
And as if thylacine sightings in Tasmania aren't strange enough, there's also plenty of thylacine sightings outside Tasmania. The island of Tasmania was the sole and isolated habitat of the animal for thousands of years, and now there are reports that the creature is still alive in other places -- most commonly on the Australian continent, but in other parts of the world as well.
In 1981, the Australia government hired professional tracker Kevin Cameron to investigate sightings of a strange animal in Western Australia. Cameron soon reported that he saw the animal and said that it was a thylacine. In 1985, Cameron produced a series of alleged photographs of a living thylacine. The pictures were initially convincing, but analysis cast doubts on their authenticity: the animal's head was never shown, its body never changed position, and the photos were taken from wide variety of angles that were inconsistent with Cameron's story of a 20- to 30-second encounter. Cameron's photos are generally judged to be of a fake or stuffed thylacine, an explanation which raises the possibility that Cameron may have killed a living thylacine and staged these photos, to avoid the government's $5,000 fine that would apply to the killing of a thylacine, which is still listed as a protected species.
The thylacine has also been recently spotted alive and well as far afield as Indonesia and England. These reports have no more credibility than the average Bigfoot sighting, or maybe even less, since there is no documented data on Bigfoot's exclusive habitats. But the thylacine has become one of the favorite topics of modern cryptozoology, even attracting the attention of famous adventure-seekers like Walt Disney, Sir Edmund Hillary, and Ted Turner, who have all searched for the creature.
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The Thunderbird
The strange case of the Thunderbird is unique in the study of unknown animals, because it contains two mysteries in one: the search for a long-lost and probably nonexistent photograph of the creature has virtually eclipsed the search for the creature itself.
The Thunderbird is a part of Native American mythology in tribes of the Pacific Northwest and the Great Lakes. These giant, birdlike creatures were said to generate lightning from their eyes and to cause thunderclaps by flapping their massive wings in the sky. There are countless sightings on record of the revered supernatural entity, or a huge bird fitting its description, both by Native Americans and the "white man."
The most celebrated Thunderbird encounter took place in 1890, on the desert sands of what was then the Arizona Territory. Two cowboys had a bizarre confrontation which has varied widely in the telling, but the gist of the story is this: they saw a giant flying bird, shot and killed it with their rifles, and carried its spectacular carcass into town.
A report in the April 26, 1890 Tombstone Epigraph listed the creature's wingspan as an alarming 160 feet, and noted that the bird was about 92 feet long, about 50 inches around at the middle, and had a head about eight feet long. The beast was said to have no feathers, but a smooth skin and wingflaps "composed of a thick and nearly transparent membrane... easily penetrated by a bullet." Perhaps the hardest part of this story to swallow is that two horses could manage to haul a dead behemoth like this for any distance.
Sounds like a typical tall tale of the Wild West, and that's probably what it is. But it apparently does contain a kernel of truth. In 1970, Harry McClure claimed that as a boy he knew the two cowboys from the story later in their lives, and they had told him a different version of the events. McClure said the giant bird they saw in the desert actually had a wingspan of more like 20 to 30 feet -- much more reasonable than 160, but still enormous. The two riders shot at the creature, but it was out of range. Their spooked horses refused to chase it, so the men rode into town empty-handed, carrying only news of the one that got away.
The Tombstone newspaper printed its highly embroidered version of the cowboy's sighting, which was spared from fading into obscurity by its inclusion in a 1930 book on the Old West. In 1963, the story came to the attention of writer Jack Pearl, who revived the tale for an article in a pulpy men's adventure magazine called Saga. As if the Epigraph report hadn't spiced up the facts enough already, Pearl liberally embellished the encounter into a dramatic rip-snorter entitled "Monster Bird That Carries Off Human Beings!"
Pearl pushed the date of the encounter back to 1886, and he described the witnesses as two prospectors who killed the bird and proudly showed off their trophy in Tombstone. Pearl also added some extra conflict by telling of a how a second Thunderbird snatched up a heckler who had ridiculed the prospectors and flew away with him in its talons. But Pearl's most significant editorialization was this: he said that the Epigraph newspaper story had run with a photograph of the giant bird's carcass, nailed up to a wall with its mighty wingspan unfurled, and a number of men posing next to it for scale.
This part of the legend, the Thunderbird photo, has taken on a life of its own. Pearl's fictional account of a photograph of Old West settlers with a big dead bird was picked up and repeated time and again, multiplying and evolving just as it had before Pearl ever got hold of it.
In time, people who heard the story began to believe that they had previously seen the photo with their own eyes. Somehow, people felt convinced that they had once marveled at the strange picture in some old book or newspaper, often noting that they didn't realize the significance of the photo at the time, and regretting that they had not kept it. The details might differ from one recollection to the other, with some recalling the bird had feathers and others saying it looked more like a pterodactyl, and some thinking the bird was nailed to a wall and others remembering that it was held with wings outstretch by a large group of men. But no matter what the specifics, each person feels certain his or her memory is true.
Many have reported that they saw the Thunderbird photo in FATE Magazine, National Geographic, Grit, or some other similar publication, but entire archives of these periodicals have been searched, and no Thunderbird discovered. The experts in the cryptozoology field are no less susceptible to Thunderbird recollections than the common layman, with Ivan T. Sanderson and John A. Keel among those who claim to have once held the photo in their hands. Some accounts of seeing the photo are amazingly precise and hard to disregard. Larry Thomas told Strange Magazine that he saw the photo in a library in the early 1980s, as an adult, in a thin hardcover book of photography from the Old West. He says that he was so fascinated by the picture that he looked at it dozens of times over a four-year period, and he even checked the book out once so he could take it home for his wife to see. (The illustration on this page is based on Thomas's recollection.)
It's difficult to tell someone that an experience as vivid as that never really happened, but what is the alternative? What's the word with the Thunderbird?
The best explanation for the phantom photo phenomenon is that these are memories of things that never existed. It might simply be that people have read descriptions of the cowboys and the giant bird that were so colorful and evocative that their imaginations created a near-tangible mental image of the scene. As the controversy surrounding "false memory syndrome" has demonstrated, the things we think we recall can be distorted by external suggestion, mismatched fragments of things that did happen, and maybe even debris from the collective subconscious. Some might view this line of reasoning as party-pooping skepticism, but if it's correct, what it reveals about the mysteries of the human mind is way more interesting than any big bird could ever hope to be.
The Origin of the Thunderbird
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This is a legend of long, long ago times. Two Indians desired to find the origin of thunder. They travelled north and came to a high mountain. These mountains performed magically. They drew apart, back and forth, then closed together very quickly.
One Indian said, "I will leap through the cleft before it closes. If I am caught, you continue to find the origin of thunder." The first one succeeded in going through the cleft before it closed, but the second one was caught and squashed.
On the other side, the first Indian saw a large plain with a group of wigwams, and a number of Indians playing a ball game. After a little while, these players said to each other, "It is time to go." They disappeared into their wigwams to put on wings, and came out with their bows and arrows and flew away over the mountains to the south. This was how the Passamaquoddy Indian discovered the homes of the thunderbirds.
The remaining old men of that tribe asked the Passamaquoddy Indian, "What do you want? Who are you?" He replied with the story of his mission. The old men deliberated how they could help him.
They decided to put the lone Indian into a large mortar, and they pounded him until all of his bones were broken. They moulded him into a new body with wings like thunderbird, and gave him a bow and some arrows and sent him away in flight. They warned him not to fly close to trees, as he would fly so fast he could not stop in time to avoid them, and he would be killed.
The lone Indian could not reach his home because the huge enemy bird, Wochowsen, at that time made such a damaging wind. Thunderbird is an Indian and he or his lightning would never harm another Indian. But Wochowsen, great bird from the south, tried hard to rival Thunderbird. So Passamaquoddies feared Wochowsen, whose wings Glooscap once had broken, because he used too much power.
A result was that for a long time air became stagnant, the sea was full of slime, and all of the fish died. But Glooscap saw what was happening to his people and repaired the wings of Wochowsen to the extent of controlling and alternating strong winds with calm.
Legend tells us this is how the new Passamaquoddy thunderbird, the lone Indian who passed through the cleft, in time became the great and powerful Thunderbird, who always has kept a watchful eye upon the good Indians.
Quillayute Tale
Long ago, there was a sad time in the land of the Quillayute. For days and days, great storms blew. Rain and hail and then sleet and snow came down upon the land. The hailstones were so large that many of the people were killed. The other Quillayute were driven from their coast villages to the great prairie, which was the highest part of their land.
There the people grew thin and weak from hunger. The hailstones had beaten down the ferns, the camas, and the berries. Ice locked the rivers so the men could not fish. Storms rocked the ocean so the fishermen could not go out in their canoes for deep-sea fishing. Soon, the people had eaten all the grass and roots on the prairie; there was no food left. As children died without food, even the strongest and bravest of their fathers could do nothing. They called upon the Great Spirit for help, but no help came.
At last the Great Chief of the Quillayute called a meeting of his people. He was old and wise. "Take comfort, my people," the Chief said. "We will call again upon the Great Spirit for help. If no help comes, then we will know it is His will that we die. If it is not His will that we live, then we will die bravely, as brave Quillayute have always died. Let us talk with the Great Spirit."
So the weak and hungry people sat in silence while the Chief talked with the Great Spirit, who had looked kindly upon the Quillayute for hundreds of years.
When his prayer had ended, the Chief turned again to his people. "Now we will wait for the will of the One who is wise and all-powerful."
The people waited. No one spoke. There was nothing but silence and darkness. Suddenly, there came a great noise, and flashes of lightning cut the darkness. A deep whirring sound, like giant wings beating, came from the place of the setting sun. All of the people turned to gaze toward the sky above the ocean as a huge, bird-shaped creature flew toward them.
This bird was larger than any they had ever seen. Its wings, from tip to tip, were twice as long as a war canoe. It had a huge, curving beak, and its eyes glowed like fire. The people saw that its great claws held a living, giant whale.
In silence, they watched while Thunderbird - for so the bird was named by everyone -carefully lowered the whale to the ground before them. Thunderbird then flew high in the sky, and went back to the thunder and lightning it had come from. Perhaps it flew back to its perch in the hunting grounds of the Great Spirit.
Thunderbird and Whale saved the Quillayute from dying. The people knew that the Great Spirit had heard their prayer. Even today they never forget that visit from Thunderbird, never forget that it ended long days of hunger and death. For on the prairie near their village are big, round stones that the grandfathers say are the hardened hailstones of that storm long ago.
Thunderbird is a very large bird, with feathers as long as a canoe paddle. When he flaps his wings, he makes thunder and the great winds. When he opens and shuts his eyes, he makes lightning. In stormy weather, he flies through the skies, flapping his wings and opening and closing his eyes.
Thunderbird's home is a cave in the Olympic Mountains, and he wants no one to come near it. If hunters get close enough so he can smell them, he makes thunder noise, and he rolls ice out of his cave. The ice rolls down the mountainside, and when it reaches a rocky place, it breaks into many pieces. The pieces rattle as they roll farther down into the valley.
All the hunters are so afraid of Thunderbird and his noise and rolling ice that they never stay long near his home. No one ever sleeps near his cave.
Thunderbird keeps his food in a dark hole at the edge of a big field of ice and snow. His food is the whale. Thunderbird flies out of the ocean, catches a whale and hurries back to the mountains to eat it. One time Whale fought Thunderbird so hard that during the battle, trees were torn up by their roots. To this day there are no trees in Beaver Prairie because of the fight Whale and Thunderbird had that day.
At the time of the Great Flood, Thunderbird fought a long, long battle with Killer Whale. He would catch Killer Whale in his claws and start with him to the cave in the mountains. Killer Whale would escape and return to the water. Thunderbird would catch him again, all the time flashing lightning from his eyes and flapping his wings to create thunder. Mountains were shaken by the noise, and trees were uprooted in their struggle.
Again and again Killer Whale escaped. Again and again Thunderbird seized him. Many times they fought, in different places in the mountains. At last Killer Whale escaped to the middle of the ocean, and Thunderbird gave up the fight.
That is why Killer Whales live in the deep oceans today. That is why there are many prairies in the midst of the forests on the Olympic Peninsula.
Travel to the homelands of the Thunderbird:
Green Bay (Midwest)
The Winnebago do not remember a time when they did not live at Red Banks on the south shore of Green Bay. Their occupation of Wisconsin is very ancient, perhaps thousands of years. Their homeland lay between Green Bay and Lake Winnebago in northeast Wisconsin but they dominated the area from Upper Michigan south to present-day Milwaukee extending west to the Mississippi.
Ho Chunk (Winnebago) Reservation
Wisconsin Ho Chunk Business Committee
Gordon Thunder, Chairperson
P.O. Box 667
Black River Falls, WI 54615
Tel# (715) 284-9343, Fax# 284-9805
Maine (Northeast)
The Quoddy Loop area of Maine and New Brunswick was once occupied exclusively by the Passamaquoddy, and related tribes. These people lived by their skills on the abundant natural resources of woods, mountains, and waters. During the winter, the tribe would move inland, relying on hunting in the forests, while in summer, they would move to the coast and outlying islands to fish.
Passamaquoddy Tribe
Pleasant Point Reservation
PO Box 343
Perry, Maine 04667
(207) 853-2600
Quillayute River (Pacific Northwest):
Directions from the East (Port Angeles, Seattle, Tacoma) From Port Angeles take highway 101, 50 miles to highway 110. Turn right and go 8 miles to Three Rivers Resort. Turn right and go 1/4 mile turn left in to Leyendeckers boat launch.
Quileute Reservation
Quileute Tribal Council
Douglas Woodruff, Chairperson
P.O. Box 279
LaPush, WA 98350
Tel# (360) 374-6163
Fax# (360) 374-6311
Tombstone, Arizona
Tombstone lies about 70 miles southeast of Tucson, 20 miles east of the San Pedro river, and 15 miles southwest of the Dragoon Mountains.
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De Loys Ape Back to TOP of page
Ameranthropoides loysi, or Mono Rei:
Between 1917-1920, a Swiss geologist, named Dr. Francois De Loys and his men were searching for oil around the River Tarra and Rio Catatumbo at the Venezuelan - Colombian border in South America (Heuvelmans, 1959). This mountainous region, the Sierra de Perijaa, was heavily forested, and that time was inhabited by the 'dangerous' Motilone Indians.
One day, while De Loys and his crew were resting near the Tarra River deep in the jungle, two monkeys suddenly stepped out of the woods, screaming and shaking branches. They were holding onto bushes, walked upright then broke off several branches, waving them like weapons. When the monkeys threw their own excrement at the terrified De Loys and his exhausted companions, they grabbed their guns and fired at the more aggressive-looking male, but killed the female. The male stepped aside, though wounded, but disappeared in the forest.
Since De Loys, and his people have never seen such large monkeys, he wanted to preserve the carcass. When finally de Loys returned home with the only remaining evidence, the picture, which he had placed into his travel-notebook, he basically forgot about his encounter with the unknown monkeys. Years later his friend, French anthropologist Georges Montandon flipped the pages of De Loys' notebook, and discovered the photo. Montandon got an idea.
Although Professor Montandon was familiar with most of the monkeys discovered to that date, he had never seen one like that in De Loys' picture. Montandon speculated that the large monkey on the picture was a very human-like creature. It had no tail. Its size according to De Loys was 4 feet 5 inches. It had 32 teeth. It had all the features like the anthropoids in the Old World have and, therefore must be an anthropoid Ape. Not just any Ape, but an 'American' Ape -- a 'Missing Link!' He asked De Loys for more details, calculated some measurements by estimating and comparing the size of the box with the body on the picture, and in 1929, convinced De Loys to tell the story to the Illustrated London News (Loys, 1929 op. cit.: Keith, 1929; Heuvelmans, 1959; Hill, 1962) Shortly therafter, Montandon published his statement in the Journal de la Societe des Americanistes (Montandon, 1929a); then wrote another note which he presented at the French Academy of Sciences in Paris. (Montandon, 1929b). 'Montandon went so far as to create a new genus Amer-anthropoides for the reception of the new animal, giving it the specific name loysi in honor of its discoverer.' (Hill, 1962).
At the meeting of The French Academy of Sciences Montadon tried to present some convincing 'evidence' about his major discovery of the American Ape, a so far unknown 'American version' of the African chimpanzee and gorilla, and the Asian orangutan. He and De Loys, - who under Montandon's pressure also tried to support the new discovery hypothesis, - had to face with numerous questions at the Academy. Naturalists and anthropologists questioned them very suspiciously. They raised many questions about the photograph: the size of the monkey sitting on the box, about her 'missing' tail, her set of only 32 teeth, her spider-monkey-like face (Joleaud, 1929), her female sex organ - that resembled that of a male spider monkey. (Female spider monkeys have a long, bulbous clitoris, that people, even today often mistaken for the male sex organ).
The skepticism and some of the criticisms resulted in heated debates, often ridiculing Montandon's alleged hypothesis as a fraud (Keith, 1929 op. cit.; Heuvelmans, 1959). When Montandon ran out of more convincing arguments in order to support his fancy hypothesis, he triedto bring up some anecdotes based on stories of Indian tribes like about the guayazi, the di-di, and the vasitri or 'big-devil' that believed to attack women.
These stories were similar in nature, to those, that people were attributing to gorillas in Africa (Heuvelmans, 1959). A. de Humboldt, who did not believe any of these stories, attributed these alleged attacks to the spectacled bear (Tremarctos ornatus) and Marquis de Wavrin mentions these creatures as 'marimunda' which were later also identified as spider monkeys: Ateles belzebuth (Wendt, 1956; Heuvelmans, 1959; Hill, 1962).
Montandon was defeated in scientific circles, but the story createdsome ambiguity, which led into more investigations for years to come, and in the mind of some, even today, that there are still some large, yet mysterious creatures of several kind, like Bigfoot, Yeti and Snowman still roaming the wilderness.
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Mongolian Death Worm
Allegedly, a fat, bright red snakelike animal measuring two to four feet in length that supposedly has the dramatic ability to kill people and animals instantly at a range of several feet. The Mongolian Death Worm is believed to accomplish this by either spraying an enormously lethal poison, or by somehow transmitting high electrical charges into its victims.
The worm is said to be found solely in the sand dunes of the southern part of the Gobi Desert; Allghoi Khorkhoi (local name, meaning "intestine worm," because of its color and appearance) is so feared among the people of Mongolia that the simple mention of it is considered bad luck. It is believed that touching any part of the worm will bring instant death, and its venom supposedly corrodes metal. Local folklore also tells of a predilection for the color yellow and local parasitic plants such as the Goyo.
First reported in 1929, the Mongolian Death Worm is said to emerge during the hot months of June and July and to hibernate the rest of the year.
Story:
One story said that a little boy was outside playing with a yellow toy box, when, suddenly, the Mongolian Death Worm crawled into the box. Out of curiosity, the little boy touched the worm and was instantly killed. When the parents saw his dead body and the wavy trail in the sand, they knew what happened to their son. They ran after the worm and tried to kill it, but the exact opposite happened. The parents died.
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Giant Congo Snake
In 1959, Belgium halecopter pilot, Col. Remy Ven Lierde encountered a giant snake while on potrol over the Congo. Acording to his reports the Serpent measured between 40-50 feet long, with a triangular head measuring about three foot by two foot, with a coloring of dark brownish-green and white belly.
Ven Lierde claims that as the helicopter flew closer, to take better pictures, the serpent rose up about ten feet off the ground, and acted as though it would strike at the helicopter if it aproached any closer than it already had.
Experts have authenticated both the picture and size of the creature through thorough research of said photos.
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Owlman Back to TOP of page
On April 17, 1976, near Mawnan Church on the south coast of Cornwall, England, 12 year-old June Melling and her 9 year-old sister Vicky encountered a bizarre creature they described as "a feathered birdman". The church where the sighting took place was built inside a prehistoric earthwork, one of England's innumerable ancient "sacred sites."
Almost three months later, on July 3, two other young girls, Sally Chapman and Barbara Perry, both 14 years old, were camping in the woods near the church when around 10pm they began to hear a strange hissing sound. They then spotted a figure not too far away among the pine trees.
"It was like a big owl with pointed ears, but as big as a man," Sally would describe later. "The eyes were red and glowing. At first, I thought it was someone dressed up, playing a joke, trying to scare us. I laughed at it, we both did, then it went up in the air and we both screamed. When it went up, you could see its feet were like pincers."
Her friend Barbara Perry added: "It's true. It was horrible, a nasty owl-face with big ears and big red eyes. It was covered in grey feathers. The claws on its feet were black. It just flew straight up and disappeared in the treetops."
The next day, July 4, another young girl, Jane Greenwood, along with her sister, saw the frightening creature in the same woods near Mawnan Church.
"It was in the trees standing like a full-grown man," Jane explained, "but the legs bent backwards like a bird's. It saw us and quickly jumped up and rose straight up through the trees. (We) saw it very clearly before it rose up.
"It has red slanting eyes and a very large mouth. The feathers are silvery grey and so are his body and legs. The feet are like big, black crab claws....It was so strange, like something from a horror movie....
"Our mother thinks we made it all up just because we read about these things, but that is not true. We really saw the bird man, though it could have been somebody playing a trick in very good costume and make-up."
After July 1976, the Owlman was not reported again until June 1978. A 16 year-old girl saw "a monster, like a devil, flying up through the trees near old Mawnan Church."
On August 2, three young french girls saw the same thing near the church, "very big, like a great furry bird." It was white with a "gaping mouth and big round eyes." They were frightened out of their wits.
No other encounters with this Owlman creature were reported after 1978. The striking thing about the appearances is that all the witnesses were adolescent or teenage girls.
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Springheeled Jack: Back to TOP of page
Reports of a strange leaping figure began in south-west London in 1837; the descriptions of the strange character ranged from a monster with wings and horns to a powerfully built man in a shiny suit with helmet and cloak spitting fire. "Devil-like" was the only description given of the strange figure that escaped with incredible leaps and bounds after attacking Polly Adams, a farmer's daughter who worked in a south London Pub; the description was given of the assailant of another woman in Clapham churchyard. But it wasn't until a year later, in 1838, that the rumors were terrifyingly confirmed.
In January 1838, the Lord Mayor, Sir John Cowan, drew public attention to a letter he had recieved from a resident of Peckham giving details of an attack by the so-called "Spring-Heeled Jack"; this public acceptance of the rumors by the Lord Mayor then led to a flood of letters from individuals who had been too frightened and embarrassed to report their own encounters previously. A few weeks later, on a February night, young and pretty Jane Alsop, who lived with her father and two sisters, answered a violent knocking at her front door. There was a man in the shadows by the front gate who identified himself as a police officer, and asked her to bring a light... he claimed to have captured the infamous "Spring-Heeled Jack"! Excited, Jane fetched a candle and hurried it out to the gate.
As she handed it to the man, he grabbed her neck and pinned her head under his arm, then began to rip up her dress and body. Screaming, she freed herself and ran only to be caught again; holding her by the hair, the wildman clawed at her face and neck. One of Jane's sisters, hearing the struggle, ran into the street and called for help; but before anyone could stop him, Spring-Heeled Jack leapt away into the shadows.
Jane Alsop later described her attacker as wearing a helmet and a tight-fitting white costume, "like an oilskin," under a black cloak. His face was hideous, with eyes like balls of fire; he had claws on his fingers, and vomited blue and white flames. Jane was not the only victim. Lucy Scales (or Squires) was 18 years old when she met Jack, only a few months after Jane. The sister of a butcher, she had just left her brother's house to walk home with her sister. As they entered Green Dragon Alley in Limehouse, an empty street, a tall, cloaked figure leaped from the shadows and belched blue flames into Lucy's face, blinding her. Sometime after the attack on Lucy Scales, a strange figure was seen scaling the spire of a London church, leaping away into the darkness after a short time. Rumors spread of the same unknown entity being seen on the Tower of London.
Spring-Heeled Jack was sighted all over England through the 1850's and 1860's (especially in the Midlands). In the 1860's, according to one report, the villain had been cornered by a mob only to escape by jumping a hedge. Parents kept their children off the streets for fear of the bouncing terror. In the 1870's army authorities set traps for him after he slapped sentries with his icy hands and jumped atop their guard boxes. One night in 1877, angry townspeople tried to shoot him, to no avail. The last time Jack was definitely seen was in Liverpool in September 1904, where he was jumping from street to rooftops and back again, and/or just jumping over a building in William Henry Street. When some brave citizens tried to corner him, he simply leaped away into the darkness. Some say that sightings of Spring-Heeled Jack continued until after World War II, but these are unconfirmable.
Read more, see picture, at: Anomalies - Author/Credit: Garth Haslam
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The Jersey Devil
The mythical creature of the New Jersey Pinelands, has haunted New Jersey and the surrounding areas for the past 260 years. This entity has been seen by over 2,000 witnesses over this period. It has terrorized towns and caused factories and schools to close down, yet many people believe that the Jersey Devil is a legend, a mythical beast, that originated from the folklore of the New Jersey Pine Barrens.
One of the most popular legends says a Mrs. Shrouds of Leeds Point, NJ made a wish that if she ever had another child, she want it to be a devil. Her next child was born misshapen and deformed. She sheltered it in the house, so the curious couldn't see him. On stormy night, the child flapped it's arms, which turned into wings, and escaped out the chimney and was never seen by the family again. A Mrs Bowen of Leeds point said, "The Jersey Devil was born in the Shrouds house at Leeds Point." Another story that also placed the birth at Leeds Point said that a young girl fell in love with a British soldier during the Revolutionary War. The people of Leeds Point cursed her. When she gave birth, she had a devil. Some people believe the birth of the devil was punishment for the mistreatment of a minister by the Leeds folk.
Another story placed the birth in Estelville, NJ. Mrs. Leeds, of Estelville, finding out she was pregnant with her 13th child, shouted,"I hope it's a devil". She got her wish. The child wad born with horns, a tail, wings, and a horse-like head. The creature revisited Mrs. Leeds everyday. She stood at her door and told it to leave. After awhile, the creature got the hint and never returned.
Burlington, NJ, also claims to be the birthplace of the Jersey Devil. In 1735, Mother Leeds was in labor on a stormy night. Gathered around her were her friends. Mother Leeds was supposedly a witch and the child's father was the devil himself. The child was born normal, but then changed form. It changed from a normal baby to a creature with hooves, a horses head, bat wings and a forked tail. It beat everyone present and flew up the chimney. It circled the villages and headed toward the pines. In 1740 a clergy exercised the devil for 100 years and it wasn't seen again until 1890.
There are many other versions of the legend. The legends say it was the 6th, 8th, 10th, 12th, or 13th child, It was born normal or deformed, and the mother confined it to the cellar or the attic. Although there are many discrepancies in all of these stories, there are 3 pieces of evidence that tie all of the legends of the Jersey Devil's origin together.
The first thing that ties the legends together is the name "Leeds". Whether the mothers name was Leeds or the birth place was Leeds Point, all of the stories include the name Leeds. Alfred Heston, the Atlantic County Historian, believes that the devil could be a Leeds or a Shrouds baby. He discovered that a Daniel Leeds opened land in Great Egg Harbor, NJ, in 1699. His family lived in Leeds Point. He also discovered a Samuel Shrouds, Sr. came to Little Egg Harbor, NJ, in 1735 and lived right across the river from the house of Mother Leeds. The 3rd fact ties in the Burlington story with the others stories. Professor Fred MacFadden of Coppin State College, Baltimore, found that a "devil" was mentioned in writings from Burlington as early as 1735. He also indicated that the word Burlington was used to name the area from the city of Burlington to the Atlantic Ocean. This means that the name that is now used for the birthplace such as Leeds point or Estelville, could be the same place referred to in the Burlington Legend.
The Jersey Devil of lore does not look like anything humanoid. It is a creature with the head of a horse, large wings and claws, and has a roughly four-foot-long serpentine body. When a person sees the Devil, he or she sees an omen of disaster to come. According to early legends, its appearances have come before shipwrecks and the outbreak of war.
Interestingly, the Jersey Devil is not the only legend which originates from the Pine Barrens. The area is home to two others. The first is the White Stag, a ghostly apparition which appears to help people at the moment of disaster. In Melnitchenko's article, she mentions the Stag was once supposed to have detoured an out-of-control stagecoach from crashing into a river.
The other legend is of James Still, "The Black Doctor." Still was a black man whose goal in life was to become a doctor. In the 19th century, the color of his skin made this an impossibility. Still retreated into the Barrens to study medicine from text books and learn herbal remedies from local Indians. Still then helped people in need who had ventured into the Barrens. Before his death, Still became a hero to those around him.
But of all the legends in the area, the Jersey Devil is the most famous and prominent. The origin of the creature dates back to the 18th century. The story goes as follows: when Mrs. Leeds, an indigent woman living in secluded poverty with her twelve starving children, found out she was to have another child exclaimed: "I don't want any more children! Let it be a devil." When the child was born, it was horribly deformed. It crawled from the womb and up the chimney and out into the woods. It is rumored to have fed on small children and livestock while haunting the area for years to come. Hence, the creatures other name is the Leeds Devil.
This is the most well known and "accepted" origin tale of the entity. Other variations of its birth state the child was deformed when Mrs. Leeds angered a clergyman. In other stories, she angered a gypsy. Other versions stated she practiced sorcery and the child was cursed by God. (Note: all these versions are akin to the werewolf lore of Eastern Europe.) One version states the child's father was a British soldier and God cursed the child since it was born out of an act of treason.
Whatever its birthright may be, the creature was alleged to have been exorcised from the area in 1740. The exorcism ritual performed could only banish it for one hundred years, allowing it to return in 1840.
Of course, these origin stories are pure myth and folklore. In all probability, these tales did not originate until the 1800s. Some accounts of the creature are fairly absurd, including it has been seen in the company of Mermaid and Captain Kidd's ghost! What was undeniable, however, was that the population of the area held a solid belief in the creature's existence and a deep-rooted fear of it.
Documented sightings would start to appear in the middle 1800s. Sketchy accounts--probably preserved by word of mouth for years before being put to print--of the Devil being sighted by townsfolk have been recorded in 1859, 1873, and 1880. One report states that Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon's brother, claimed to have seen the creature while hunting.
Records of sightings of the creature in established newspapers did not appear until the advent of the Twentieth Century. It is safe to speculate that any written records prior to the 1900s were either lost or destroyed over time. One of the earliest sightings recorded by local Philadelphia newspapers was in 1899 and it involved a businessman named George Saarosy who was awoken one night by loud, high-pitched screams in his yard. When he looked out his window, he saw the Jersey Devil fly past his house.
The most incredible flurry activity regarding the Devil did not happen until 1909 when literally thousands of encounters with the beast were reported. Articles printed in the now defunct Philadelphia Record chronicled the Devil's exploits. During the week of January 16th to the 23rd, the Jersey Devil reached a crescendo of popularity while managing to terrorize the entire population of the Delaware Valley. So immense was the attention paid to the creature, it received national news coverage.
On Saturday January 16, in the town of Woodbury, New Jersey, a man named Zack Cozzens reported seeing it on a roadside. This experience was chronicled in James Maloy and Ray Miller's book The Jersey Devil, which proved indispensable in writing this article. In it, Cozzens was quoted as saying: "I first heard a hissing sound. Then, something white flew across the street. I saw two spots of phosphorus--the eyes of the beast.... It was as fast as an auto." Later that same night, a group of people reported spying it in Bristol, Pennsylvania. The reports did not stop there.
A Mr. and Mrs. Nelson spotted the animal cavorting on their shed for ten straight minutes; police officers filed reports of shooting at it; and even a Trenton city councilman (name withheld in the source material) claimed an encounter. He had heard a hissing sound at his doorstep late one night. When he opened the door, he found cloven hoofprints in the snow. These bizarre footprints were turning up all over the New Jersey, Philadelphia, and Delaware region. Animal mutilations, occurring at random throughout the area during the week, were blamed on the Jersey Devil.
Although the sightings were front page news in Philadelphia and across the country, they were, of course, being met with total ridicule by the press. One editor went so far as to dismiss the whole thing as figments of the imagination of "complete idiots." The Philadelphia Zoo, as a joke, offered a $10,000 reward for its capture. Then, "the creature" was "captured" by Norman Jefferies and Jacob Hope.
Actually, Jefferies and Hope acquired a Kangaroo, painted stripes on it, and glued claws and wings onto it. They claimed the creature was not a demon spawn, but rather a breed of Australian vampire!
As quickly as it had come, the Jersey Devil disappeared from public view. In February of 1909, Leslie Garrison caught a fleeting glimpse of the creature flying over a clump of trees and out of sight for several years. The next recorded account--a very sketchy one--was not made until 1927 when a cabdriver (name unknown) alleged to have seen it after experiencing a flat tire. Then, the Devil would not be seen for another twenty-five years.
It was not until 1951, that there would be another outburst of Devil sightings. As reported in The Philadelphia Record, a ten-year-old boy sighted a creature "with blood dripping from its face" outsid
