Cryptids - Mysterious Unknown Creatures E-Book

Nicholas Dylan

• Herausgeber: epubli
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 118

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

What strange unknown creatures may still lurk in the dark uncharted corners of the world? Bigfoot? The Yeti? The Thetis Lake Monster? Shapeshifting Lizards? Chupacabra? Mokele-Mbembe? Sea monsters? Lost dinosaurs? Giant bats? Let us explore the strange and fascinating world of cryptids with this book:Cryptids Mysterious Unknown Creatures.

Leseprobe

Cryptids - Mysterious Unknown Creatures

Nicholas Dylan© Copyright 2023 Nicholas Dylan

ContentsMokele-MbembeBigfootSpring-Heeled JackDe Loy's ApeFaversham WolfLake Champlain MonsterLoch Ness MonsterShapeshifting LizardsEnfield HorrorThe Jersey DevilShessieZuiyo Sea MonsterAliensKentish ApemanMngwaBeast of BodminOrang-PendickYetiChupacabraThe Fouke MonsterOgoPogoGoblinWildman of EuropeBlack ShuckAhoolSurrey PumaBlob of Batteries CloseAlmasKent CavemanMorgawrSkunk ApeAkkorokamuCaddyBeast of BladenboroDevonshire DevilKiwi VampireRed Eyed Dog ManNandi BearThetis Lake MonsterAgogweMiscellaneous CryptidsFurther ReadingMOKELE-MBEMBEMokele-Mbembe is an amphibious dinosaur said to reside in the Congo. This name comes from the Lingala language and means ‘one who stops the flow of rivers’. This creature is sort of like the African version of the Loch Ness Monster and has become one of the most famous cryptids. You might think the idea of a 35 foot dinosaur living in the Congo undiscovered is preposterous but then new species of plant, insect, and monkeys have been discovered in that region in fairly recent times so it isn't as if the world's wildlife and nature has been completely charted and classified. Admittedly though it is something of a stretch to think that a dinosaur might exist but then the creature would have plenty of places to hide in an area that large and remote."Some people believe that some dinosaurs linger on," wrote the Live Science website. "Hiding until the present time in the remote jungles of central Africa, especially in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The region is the reputed home of the mokele-mbembe, an amphibious dinosaur-like creature said to be up to 35 feet long, with brownish-gray skin and a long, flexible neck. According to legends, it lives in caves it digs in riverbanks and feeds on elephants, hippos, and crocodiles."The creature is a 20th century cryptid and has been spoken of for just over one hundred years now. Despite mokele-mbembe being a part of local legend and no shortage of eyewitness descriptions or sightings any tangible proof of the monster's existence has proved to be elusive so far. Several expeditions have been launched in the area but they've - for the most part - departed without any concrete evidence for a dinosaur roaming around central Africa. Footprints alleged to have been left by the monster have proved inconclusive. In 1992 a Japanese film crew shot some aerial footage of what they believe could be the mokele-mbembe swimming in the sea but - as with Loch Ness - the footage was far from certain and could have been anything from a small animal swimming to a piece of wood or a large fish. Some though would point to the fact that the object seemed to have a dinosaur type neck. The problem with the footage is that - like all cryptid and indeed UFO footage - it is taken from a long distance away and subject to camera shaking and a certain blurriness. You could be forgiven for wondering why no one ever seems to get any crystal sharp unshaken footage of a cryptid or UFO!There have been several alleged sightings of mokele-mbembe in fairly recent years. The creature is said to live in caves that it digs for itself. Some believe the origin of this cryptid derives from the  1909 book titled Beasts and Men by Carl Hagenbeck. Hagenback said in the book that dinosaurs could still exist in Africa and this claim seemed to activate imaginations and lead to various monster hunters going off in search of dinosaurs. There was actually a Kickstarter funded expedition to search for mokele-mbembe in fairly recent times but this expedition came up empty handed and found life in the Congo Basin rather difficult.There have been around 50 expeditions mounted to find evidence of the mokele-mbembe but none of them have been successful. The main problem for the alleged existence of this monster is that if it is some sort of undiscovered dinosaur then it can't be alone and there must be more of them. If this was the case though why hasn't a body or a convincing sighting of one captured by film or camera emerged? As such this legend, as fascinating as it is, must be taken with a pinch of salt. There are many possible theories surrounding the demise of dinosaurs - like a meteorite, an epidemic or a pathogenic fungi. Dinosaurs were not merely overgrown reptiles but far more complex. Some must have been surprisingly cunning and intelligent in order to survive and hunt and so it was clearly an epic disaster the did for them.An interesting question to consider is this - what would the world be like today if the dinosaurs hadn't become extinct? Well, velociraptors were intelligent enough to hunt in packs and even had their own form of language. Imagine dinosaurs with many years more evolution than us. It is highly probable they would have developed intelligence like humans and be living in an advanced dinosaur society with their own technology. Who wouldn't pay money to get a glimpse of what that would have looked like? BIGFOOTDo huge and elusive ape creatures that walk upright like humans lurk around in the dark and lonely forests of the American Pacific Northwest? Bigfoot is a fun and creepy mystery and it does have perhaps the most famous piece of 'monster' film of all time in the Bluff Creek footage Roger Patterson took in 1967 of what he claimed was a female Bigfoot walking across a shallow stream and rocks towards the woods. Although most people probably take Patterson's footage with a grain of salt it has never been 100% debunked and some experts have pointed out the very strange gait of the creature and presence of what appear to be moving breasts and muscles. If it was a hoax then it was a clever one. Some claim that the 'Bigfoot' was Patterson's colleague Bob Gimlin in a suit and note that Patterson was a well known opportunist who had previously written a book about The Abominable Snowman. It is on the face of it a remarkable coincidence that he just happened to ride out into the forest to look for Bigfoot and managed to film one fairly swiftly - although not for very long with a somewhat shaky camera. It appears that more than one person has claimed to have been the man in the suit in the Patterson footage but the suit itself has never turned up and special effects people of the time were impressed with the footage. Anthropological artist and photogrammetrist Bill Munns estimated the height of the 'Bigfoot' in Patterson's film to be 7'4 (!) and no one has ever got close to replicating the eerie footage with a man in a monkey suit, even though many have tried.But what of the practical chances of these creatures actually existing? The mountain forests where they are said to reside are surprisingly unexplored and very dank, dark places where hunters and people rarely venture into the darkest corners. Is it possible they could hide there on a frugal vegetarian diet? The main problem with the Bigfoot legend is that these furry rascals are rather elusive and no body or skeleton is ever found - something which you'd imagine would have happened by now if they really existed. In these huge dank forests, it is easy for someone's imagination to run away with them and see shadows or glimpses of animals. Strange noises that echo through the trees, especially at night, are also prone to have people putting two and two together and coming up with five.Places like the Klamath National Forest and the Six Rivers National Forest can be very spooky. There is the obvious fact too that some of the more strange characters who live out in these places on their own have long since worked out that a few Bigfoot tales will have a chance of getting them a bit of cash and attention. The roots of Bigfoot come from the late nineteenth century, from the idea that some naturalists had about a 'missing link' roaming the earth somewhere undetected. Sightings have been steady since the 1920s and despite skepticism from the scientific community (who believe folklore, hoaxes and misidentified animals are responsible for the Bigfoot legend) this enduringly compelling mystery shows no sign of losing its appeal just yet.SPRING-HEELED JACKSpring-Heeled Jack is an alleged supernatural criminal first sighted in 1837 in London. In the volume Encounters with Flying Humanoids, Ken Gerhard describes Spring-Heeled Jack in the following way - "So named because of his apparent ability to bound effortlessly through the air, Spring-Heeled Jack was greatly feared by residents of suburban London during the 1830s. A diabolical, super-villain of sorts, he was usually described as being tall, thin, and cloaked in a tight-fitting oilskin suit, as well as a flowing cape. Jack first gained notoriety when he began to accost solitary, young women by ripping at their clothing with steely claws while he breathed noxious, blue flames into their faces. To this day, no one is sure of Jack’s true identity, nor from where this notorious scoundrel came.'The legend of this bizarre menace began in October 1837 when a young woman named Mary Stevens was walking home from Lavender Hill (where she was employed as a servant). The girl said she was assaulted in an alley by a monstrous figure who ripped at her clothes with claw like hands and had the cold clammy fingers of an animated corpse. Mary claimed that words could hardly do justice to the terrifying nature of this flesh crawling assailant. He was like some ghostly monster with the face of a zombie and bright red eyes that seemed to come from the fiery pits of Hell itself. Mary managed to scream for help during the attack and this brought members of the public onto the scene - whereupon the mysterious and alarming fiend fled into the night in impossible fashion. The beast was not only lightning quick but also elusive. One minute he was there and in the next second he was gone in a flash. Who did Mary encounter that night? She was deemed to be a credible enough witness when she spoke of her spine chilling encounter with god knows what. Mary wasn't a drunk or someone who was prone to making up stories. She really did seem to have had a strange and bewildering encounter with someone very frightening indeed. And so began the mystery and legend of the uncanny rascal destined to be forever known as Spring-Heeled Jack. The alarming encounter with Mary Stevens was merely the tip of the iceberg for this dreaded fiend. Jack was soon creating mass panic in various parts of England. You might say that, for a time, Spring-Heeled Jack became ubiquitous. He was all over the place. The next day Spring-Heeled Jack was sighted again by a coachman who claimed that Jack leapt in front of his carriage in death-defying fashion and then made his escape over a wall (a wall that no mere mortal would have been able to scale) with a spine-chilling cackle of laughter before vanishing into the night. Jack, as you've probably worked out by now,  got his name because of his reputed ability to leap up into the air - almost as if he was flying. This famous rascal therefore had what what you might describe as supernatural qualities attributed to him. It would obviously be rather difficult to catch a criminal who had the ability to leap over houses so you might say that Jack was rather elusive - to put it mildly! The legend of Spring-Heeled Jack now had firm roots and began to flourish. In the England of the late 1830s, Spring-Heeled Jack was like Blighty's version of Bigfoot. The actual existence of the fiend seemed unlikely but all the same plenty of people claimed to have seen it. Illustrations of Jack tend to have him as a scrawny and sinister figure with winged arms. He is usually depicted as looking like a cross between the child catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the monster in the horror film Jeepers Creepers. He is usually depicted as having an impish Devil like appearance with a pointed Jimmy Hill chin and red eyes. Jack looks rather like Emperor Ming from Flash Gordon (albeit a less suave version of Ming) in some of the illustrations I perused in the writing of this chapter. Sometimes he is depicted with artificial wings like Batman and sometimes the wings appear to be real wings. The one constant in illustrations of Spring-Heeled Jack seems to be an evil smirk. He obviously got a big kick out of frightening the living daylights out of the general public. Separating fact from fiction in this legend is not easy though. Was there any truth to this legend at all or is Jack is simply an urban myth or piece of entertaining English folklore? We should remember that people at the time were very prone to believing in the supernatural. Many people still believed in witches and even vampires. Tales of a winged monster who could leap over tremendously high walls were obviously taken at face value by more people in 1837 than they would be today. If you described an encounter with Spring Heeled-Jack today you'd probably be asked why you hadn't filmed him on your phone! It was obviously a lot easier in 1837 to come up with a fantastic story without having to provide too much in the way of evidence. The two most famous accounts of Spring-Heeled Jack are the Jane Alsop and Lucy Scales cases. In the Alsop case, a young woman named Jane Alsop claimed that she answered the door to a police officer (presumably, the police officer wanted some assistance from Jane's father - that seems to be the general perception) who claimed to have captured the fiend. Jane went out to see for herself if the police officer really had captured Jack (you could say that Jane was rather brave in doing this but maybe curiosity just got the better of her - who wouldn't want a look at Spring-Heeled Jack if given the chance?) - whereupon Jack then threw off his cloak and vomited blue flame as his eyes sparkled a hellish red glow. Jack then fled the scene in his usual magical gymnastic fashion - though not before Jane had seen his hideous appearance for herself. Cases like this, whether true or not, were enough to get Spring-Heeled Jack in the newspapers by now. Very soon servant girls all over London were swapping lurid stories about this alleged fiend who seemed to enjoy scaring people - especially young women. A man named Thomas Millbank was initially arrested for the attack on Alsop but then set free when it was established he was incapable of breathing blue fire! You honestly couldn't have made that up! Millbank had actually turned himself in to the police claiming to be Spring-Heeled Jack but he was obviously just some crazy person looking for attention. The fact that Millbank looked fairly normal (no red eyes at all and a normal chin) and patently lacked the ability to leap over houses also rather torpedoed his fanciful claims of being the dreaded and notorious Spring-Heeled Jack! Millbank was set free by the police and after this five minutes of fame and notoriety slid back into the obscurity from whence he came.