Cryptid Crossword

Dp by Cryptid Club

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Wait a minute, if Bigfoot doesn’t exist, and the Loch Ness Monster doesn’t exist, then who’s flying the plane?

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*walks into the middle of a forest Me: If you’re Bigfoot and you know it clap your hands! *listens

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In 2003 in their book The Field Guide to Lake Monsters, Sea Serpents, and Other Mystery Denizens of the Deep Loren Coleman and Patrick Huyghe attempt to create a new, fourteen part classification system for for aquatic cryptids.

Classic Sea Serpent, Waterhorse, Mystery Cetacean, Giant Shark, Mystery Manta, Great Sea Centipede, Mystery Saurian, Cryptid Chelonian, Mystery Sirenian, Giant Beaver, Mystery Monitor, Dinosauria, Mystery Salamander, and Giant Octopus. Those are Coleman and Huyghe’s fourteen cryptid classifications, which try to encompass the wide variety of reports from the earth’s waterways of mysterious creatures. I’m going to gradually post individual little profiles for each of them! 

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(source) (Williamson Daily News, Nov 18, 1966)  (Gettysburg Times, Dec 1, 1966)

I’m really under the weather which meant that I didn’t post yesterday, so apologies for that. To make it up to you, here are two newspaper articles about Mothman, from 1966 (photo is not from 1966).

I’ve wanted to write about Mothman since I started this blog, because the stories that I’ve read, the recaps of sightings and the descriptions have always peaked my interest. But in researching for this bit I couldn’t find a lot that had sources or credible information, except for Wikipedia (who knew?). If anything the information I could find just managed to confuse me. Every second article had differing information, and differing stories from the same people. So anything I write here that isn’t quoted or sourced is my own knowledge and I don’t claim that any of it is absolute fact. 

Here is as much as I know. In 1966 in Point Pleasant, West Virginia there were at least 100 reported sightings of what we know as ‘Mothman’, a large humanoid shape with a wing span of 10 feet and glowing red eyes. Several sightings of the creature took place near or around the ‘TNT area’, a WWII munitions testing plant. The creature reportedly followed cars, chased people, and, as you can see in the article above, was blamed for the disappearance of a dog. 'Mothman’ was also linked to the collapse of the Silver Bridge, which was found to have a single link, eye bar 330, defect, which tragically resulted in the deaths of 46 people. 

The thing I found most intriguing about the reports were that it didn’t appear to be afraid of humans, if anything it would actively seek out people, watching them and following them. Linda Scarberry, saying,

“It seems like it doesn’t want to hurt you. It just wants to communicate with you.”

Another piece of this puzzle is that during the time span of the Mothman sightings, there was increased activity and reports from people of 'Men in Black’. Strange people lurking around the area, asking those in the town questions, not about Mothman but about UFOs. Apparently these men had a habit of making those they questioned feel uneasy and uncomfortable. 

While I could never say for sure that Mothman is real, I think it’s one of the more imagination sparking Cryptids, it’s so called behaviour and the descriptions of it immediately peak my interest, but always remind me to take everything with a grain of salt. 

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Cryptid themed ask me anything!

Ahool: Have you ever traveled overseas, and if so, where did you go?

Champ: Is there something you’re looking forward to?

Chupacabra: What’s your favourite food?

Dover Demon: Do you believe in aliens?

Flatwoods Monster: What does your favourite outfit consist of?

Fur- bearing trout: Do you have any tattoos or piercings?

Jackalope: What’s your favourite alcoholic (or non) drink?

Jersey Devil: If you had three wishes, what would they be?

Kelpie: Would you kiss the last person you kissed again?

Kraken: If you could have any superpower what would you want to have?

Loch Ness Monster: Where is your favourite river/lake/pool/beach?

Lusca: What country do you want to travel to?

Mermaid: Who is your celebrity crush?

Mokele-Mbembe: What’s your favourite book?

Mothman: Who are you most comfortable around?

Ningen: What’s the last movie you watched?

Ogopogo: What band can’t you get enough of at the moment?

Ropen: One little known fact about yourself?

Sasquatch: Where is your number one camping destination?

Skunk-ape: What TV shows are you watching right now?

Thunderbird: What is your biggest fear?

Thylacine: What’s one thing on your bucket list?

Wendigo: Do you believe in good and bad luck?

Yeti: Where do you go when you want to be alone?

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Higher-res image of “Benjamin,” the last known thylacine, meeting a domestic dog through the fence at Hobart Zoo, c.1933. [x]

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Anyone who thinks cryptozoology is the study of the impossible has never really taken a very good look at the so-called “natural world.” Once you get past the megamouth sharks, naked mole rats, and spotted hyenas, then the basilisks, dragons, and cuckoos just don’t seem that unreasonable. Unpleasant, yes, but unreasonable? Not really.

Seanan McGuire

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A little something i did for cryptidcrossword hope you like it!! uou

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OMMGMGMGMGMGMGMGMGMGMGMGMG AHHHHHH YESSSSSS

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Bringing it back solely so I can look at it forever

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Still one of my favourite sculptures I’ve made, based on Ortelius’s map of Iceland waters (British Library, Maps c.2.d.7, map 72) (bottom right).

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The Folly Beach Monster

This cryptid is going to be a little bit different than the others I’ve written about. The main reason being this one has been solved! Though I typically write about the unknown and the unanswered I do find this tale very interesting!

Stick around for the frightening tale of the Folly Beach Monster! 

Keep reading

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Probably the most famous image of a Sasquatch comes from the Patterson/Gimlin footage. Shot in 1967, Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin were in Northern California searching on horseback for evidence of the existence of Sasquatches when they caught sight of a large, dark haired figure (starting at around 2:47).

So was it a hoax, or was it real? Well, in 2002 a costume designer named Philip Morris came forward to say that in 1967, Patterson came to him with great interest in his gorilla suits, asking questions pertaining to alterations and eventually bought one. Then in 2004 another man came forward, Bob Heironimus, and claimed that he had been paid $1,000 by Patterson to wear the suit and appear in the film. Several of Heironimus’ family members also corroborated this, after seeing a gorilla suit in the boot of his car.

The costume designer Morris is quoted as saying “The Bigfoot researchers say that no human can walk that way in the film. Oh, yes they can! When you’re wearing long clown’s feet, you can’t place the ball of your foot down first. You have to put your foot down flat. Otherwise, you’ll stumble. Another thing, when you put on the gorilla head, you can only turn your head maybe a quarter of the way. And to look behind you, you’ve got to turn your head and your shoulders and your hips. Plus, the shoulder pads in the suit are in the way of the jaw. That’s why the Bigfoot turns and looks the way he does in the film. He has to twist his entire upper body.”

But plenty of experts say that the body movements in this video are genuine, and cannot be replicated by man. Dr. Dmitri D Donskoy, chief of the chair of bio mechanics at the USSR central Institute of Physical culture in Moscow said this of the film “All of these factors together allow us to evaluate the gait of the creature of the footage as a natural movement without any signs of the artfulness that one would see in an imitation. At the same time, with all of the diversity of locomotion illustrated by the creature of the footage, its gait as seen is absolutely non-typical of man.”

There are no easy answers about this clip. The thing with photographic or anecdotal evidence is it cannot conclusively say that something exists, but it also cannot rule out the possibility. As easily as Patterson and Gimlin could be lying about the authenticity of the footage, so could Morris and Heironimus be lying about their involvement, and there is no conclusive way to say if the footage was real or if it was in fact just an elaborate hoax.

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Sometimes you just gotta go to that garage sale and buy those Bigfoot footprint casts from the 80s, even when you’re very unwell.

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Bigfoot Portraits (source)

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Australian teacher and amateur photographer Paul Day recently uploaded what he believes to be footage of a living Thylacine. Spotted in a field in South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula, Day told Australian paper the Advertisor “I thought to myself ‘if that’s not a thylacine I’ll eat my own hat’”.

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These are the ‘Jacobs Photos’. Taken in 2007 in Northwest Pennsylvania on a trail camera, the first photo shows identifiable bear cubs frolicking around in front of the motion sensor camera, the next two photos though shown something a bit less identifiable. Whatever this creature is, to me it doesn’t look like your run of the mill bear, deer or big cat. I’ve seen pictures of mangy bears, and as you can see in the Google search, others believe that what this is, is not so cryptic. To me it looks like a pretty good fit, but you also just cannot be sure. Whatever it is, it’s not something I want to run into on a dark night, down a dark ally way…in the middle of a forest. 

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This photograph is said to have been taken by Frank S. Smythe in 1937 but was not published until 1952, when it appeared in Popular Science. The prints are believed to have been the tracks of a Yeti. Experts that have studied the image believe otherwise and claim them to be that of a bear. 

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Potential Sasquatch sighting, October 3, 2014. Taken by a young First Nation boy, he trailed what he believed was a Sasquatch and from within 10 yards took these photos. (source)