Here are new pictures of the historic Minnesota Iceman, a curiosity which circulated through carnivals and fairs through the 1960s. As you can see, the creature has a arm out stretched over his face which, if you can squint, appears to only feature one eye in socket.

The pictures appear in a new book entitled Pickled Punks and Girlie Shows by Rick West.

[Cryptomundo]

Like a tale from a science-fiction horror story, young Mao Xiping, from Gezhai, China, was checking her vegetables when she noticed a strange, hairless creature gnawing at her vegetables. Believing it was a rabbit, she approached it. However, she wasn’t prepared for the terrifying site that awaited her. Sitting there, in her vegetables, was a creature with an ‘alien face.’ It was thin, almost skeletal, with little fur and large bulbous eyes.

It looked something like this:

However, this terrifying creature was not an alien creature. After feeding it cucumbers and peachers, Mao discovered that the poor, terrified creature was not a rabbit, or an extraterrestrial on his way back home. He was found to be a very sick Slow Lorris, once Mao took him to local scientists. However, because Mao and her terrified neighbours hadn’t seen a slow lorris before, yet alone one this emaciated, it truly was alien to them. He had little hair, and a visable skeletal frame, something that was literally out of the villagers world. This just goes to show how strange the things from our own world can be, and leads us to think, what could be out there?

Source[UPI]

Special guest Dr. Karen Stollznow helps the gang plan a heist for a sacred Yeti paw. Brian and Justin get enormous glee from watching Andrew get corrected. The ethics of eating canned whale meat is debated. We also find out how ready and willing we are to be corrupted by the dark side.

Then a super secret plan (shhhh!) is hatched to get prominent skeptics tripped out on psychoactives so we can see what happens when they have their own double rainbow experience.

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Download url: http://www.itricks.com/upload/WeirdThings072110.mp3

Dr. Karen Stollznow’s website

As we prepare for tomorrow’s live hunt for what is known as the “Night Creeper”, we thought we’d share with you some photos from a recent reconnaissance of the area. Our first nighttime recon resulted in Justin and I getting stopped by the police FYI. It appears we’re not the only ones paying attention to the weird reports coming from the area.

What stood out most to us is the fact that this area forms a triangle with two other hotspots of unusual activity and they both have large bodies of water nearby that lead straight to the Everglades – a wild environment filled with cryptid and unusual phenomena.

On Monday night’s live show (9PM EST) we plan to go into a tunnel that’s the main access point between the wetlands and the area of interest. We’re not assuming it’s a cryptid or some other creature that’s been sighted. We just find it very interesting.

During our daylight investigation we found signs that something was living underneath there or at least spent some time there. The above photo shows a very large fish head that was dragged 10 feet above the bank into a dark corner. A raccoon or Gollum? We hope to find out.

Cryptomundo tells the beautiful love story of actress Maria Bello (you might remember her from THAT scene in A History Of Violence) and her new fiance Bryn Mooser, one that was cemented by a mutual interest in the search for cryptids.

Other common interests? Politics and Africa.

[Cryptomundo]

Many mistaken cryptids are actually just fugly animals with a bad case of the mange. So what does that have to do with our planet’s current case of global warming driving and increase in sightings of potential Yetis, Bigfoots and Chupacabra?

Everything.

LiveScience spoke to Mike Bowdenchuck, state director for Texas Wildlife Services, who explained why mysterious, hairless animals are more common in Texas and the southwest than other areas:

“Down here, animals don’t die of mange, because the temperatures are warm enough,” Bowdenchuck said. Rather, the animals live with mange.

“Mange is very common in colder areas, in fact wolves are getting it in Montana right now, and in North Dakota foxes get it,” he said, noting a big difference: “Up there it’s fatal, so you never see animals with the severe cases that we see in the southern climates, because they don’t live long enough for the mites to get that bad to cause the hair to fall off. They die of hypothermia first.”

Animals that have lost their fur are more vulnerable to the cold, so in warmer climates they live longer (and be more likely to be seen). Thus one might conclude that sightings of hairless animals will become more common as the climate warms. The extended forecast calls for more non-Bigfoot, non-Yeti, and non-chupacabra mangy monster sightings.

Why wasn’t this the poster for An Inconvenient Truth?

[Live Science]

All manner of sycophantic websites and pot-stirring gossip rags have run “fun” features about celebrities’ pets. With headlines like “Hollywood goes to the Dogs!” “Hollywood is the Cat’s Meow!” and “Hollywood: No One Here Likes Rabbits!” these articles beg the question: what are these stars trying to hide? I mean, if you bank three mil a year, and then you go out and buy some kind of $500,000 purebred something or other that looks like a bat and can fit on a sandwich, I’m willing to believe that it’s your only pet. But if you bank 15 mil a year and buy that dog, it’s a cover for something far more extravagant. Today, Weird Things is blowing the lid off the biggest story since yesterday when Corey Haim died: Cryptozoology and the Stars

After filming “The Mothman Prophecies” in 2001, Richard Gere allegedly became obsessed with the film’s titular mystery beastie. When his Craigslist ad seeking “The Legendary Mothman” failed to turn up anything more than nine imposters, three middle-aged vigilantes and one historically insignificant mothman, Gere resigned himself to searching for “The World’s Most Moth-like Man,” who he plans to transform into the Legendary Mothman using chemicals. While Pedro Veranza, the world’s most moth-like man, has been imprisoned in Gere’s second-largest bathroom for over two years, the actor’s Craigslist postings indicate that he’s still “Seeking Chemials [sic].”

The editors of Carrie Fischer’s recent memoir, “Wishful Drinking,” supposedly excised a controversial chapter in which the “Star Wars” actress described a decade-long addiction to exotic intoxicants including Bigfoot dander, Martian extract and Phoenicus Lite, “this awful beer from Atlantis that tasted like piss, but reminded me of my college years.”

Before washing up on a Long Island beach, the so-called “Montauk Monster” was named Reggie and belonged to a now-devastated Sean William Scott. A friend of Scott reports that he got a call from the actor during which a weeping Sean William both recounted the tragedy and lashed out at the Internet response: “We were out on my boat together, and the little guy must have gotten over excited. It all happened so fast. I turned around for, like, two seconds… and then I heard a splash…” an inconsolable Scott went on to say, “Montauk Monster!? How about Montauk Friend? How about Montauk Best Friend? These [expletive deleted] bloggers… these [expletive deleted]s are the monsters!”

Inside sources report that actress Zooey Deschanel recently a purchased a Chupacabra with the intention of entering the beast in dog fighting competitions. Upon discovering that even illegal dog fighting has some rules, the actress quickly packed the creature into a large wooden crate. She then moved the crate in front of her couch and covered it with a table cloth, upon which she positioned two bowls of M&Ms and a coffee table book about trains. When guests ask about the smell, Deschanel allegedly replies, “It’s nothing. Have some M&Ms. And look at these trains!”

In David Cronenberg’s The Fly, the Brundlefly’s last horrific mutation was actually played by a deformed swamp monster owned by actor Jeff Goldblum. Goldblum reportedly told members of the crew that he bought the creature to “punch when I’m frustrated.” The actor then offered, “Go ahead. Try it! It’s like punching a girl in her brain!”

More elusive than Bigfoot, cagier than Nessie and capable of eating twice as much human flesh as the average Wendigo – It’s Michael Rooker, and when you aren’t checking him out in his new Web series “Rooker,” or in everyone’s favorite film, “The Bone Collector,” your reading about him all this week, as we celebrate his contribution to genre films, right here at WeirdThings.com

Law and order. Crime and chaos. Rooker has chased down dark, wandering demons, pinned them up against mountains and torn out their still-beating hearts with his teeth. And Rooker has eaten the black hearts of wraiths and become a demon himself, leading fool-headed heroes on perilous, grueling pursuits, with the promise that only one man would live to see another sunrise.

“But, hold on!” you say. “What about love?”

For Rooker in love – and I don’t mean typical Hollywood c-plot stolen glances over a patrol car dashboard culminating in a road-weary third-act kiss interrupted by gunfire – one need look no further than James Gunn’s superlative 2006 horror-comedy, “Slither.” Plot-wise, Rooker’s character Grant Grant is a small-town business mogul who becomes possessed by an alien being that uses Grant’s body to initiate an elaborate reproductive cycle through which the town’s inhabitants are enslaved by the malicious being’s collective consciousness. The brilliance of the film (aside from, like, that entire concept) is that the alien hive mind absorbs Grant’s core emotional memories, which it passes on to the newly zombified townsfolk. At the beginning of the film, Rooker plays a character who’s focused, authoritative, arrogant and, though lustful towards his beautiful, young wife, Starla (played by the always-stellar Elizabeth Banks), hardly romantic. Once his consciousness is consumed and his body is horrifically mutated, aside from his pride and ambition (now directed toward the systematic assimilation of the human race), the only thing that remains of Grant, and his former life with Starla, is his love, which he broadcasts out through the tortured voices of every townsperson, while their deforming bodies – now dehumanized mental appendages of a sinister interstellar despot – lurch and stumble through the ruined town.

You could make the argument that Grant’s urge to rise above his small-town roots had already resulted in the capture of his brain by the hive mind of American capitalism, which seeks to undermine small-town life and private business through corporate homogeneity. In that reading of the film, Starla was already wed to a monster, who only comes to truly appreciate his wife through possession by the alien being and the realization that he has defiled himself and become something foreign and hideous. Still, Grant loves Starla, and that single emotional fact dominates a film that, at its heart, is really about disgusting slugs and the way they try to force themselves down the throats of naked teenagers. That the details of Grant’s life exist on the page is only secondary to the way Rooker inhabits the character, and, even through a twisted cocoon of plastic and make-up, gives the audience something to feel and someone flawed, pathetic and wholly relatable to feel it for.

The subtle, somehow-sympathetic arrogance of Rooker’s performance in “Slither” is present (though, by virtue of the character’s role, not as fully developed) in an earlier film – Kevin Smith’s lovable cinematic debacle, “Mallrats.” Playing Mr. Jared Svenning, who, like Grant, is a physically intimidating, ambitious, money-hungry conniver, Rooker’s performance fills the necessary role of the cartoonishly rotten antagonist. Because the film is more character-driven comical picaresque than plot-based narrative, Svenning’s intentions earn more screen time than his specific motivations – the intention being to ensure that his daughter, Brandy, never marries TS, a consummate (but pure-hearted) slacker. Now, on the surface, Jared Svenning really does come off as just an immense cosmic butthole. And, watching the film at age 15, it’s easy to hate Rooker’s character and root for those lovable mallrats to dick-joke their way to a happy ending. Watching the film now, while I still cheer as Svenning savors those pretzels, I also understand that, for better or worse, he loves is daughter. Sure, he wrongly projects his already over-inflated sense of entitlement upon her, but, ultimately, he doesn’t want his little girl pawed on by a food court-lurking lollygagger – and who can blame him? Leave it to Rooker to sum up a father’s love in screams, puke and a gong-accompanied butt-cheek reveal.

Seriously. Leave it to Rooker. He’s a professional and he’ll do it right now if he has to. In fact, he wants to. He even bought an automated gong that’s programmed to sound every time he shimmies his round ass out of the shower.

More Rooker on Friday.

Over time fads and tastes change. You’d think that at least Yeti’s could remain immune to this kind of cultural pressure. Sadly no. His appearance and behavior has changed over the years.

From the December 27th, 1937 Milwaukee Journal, we have one of the earliest accounts ever of a Yeti.

When Col. Bury was a little more than 20,000 feet up on the desolate slopes of Mount Everest, helmeted against the intense cold, he suddenly stopped as though he had been struck. There before him in the glistening snow were the marks of what looked like a naked human foot.

He called the coolies. They were terrified, and exclaimed that the tracks were those of a “wild hairy man,” one of the race of “abominable snowmen.”

Black hair and a tail?

A Tibetan shepherd who claims to have shot one, vowed that he was eight feet tall, leapt 20 feet, and had a tail on which he could sit without slipping on the ice. The snowman had long black hair, and an appetite not merely for yaks, but for human beings.

Fans of lovable, white haired and perhaps only slightly grumpy Yeti’s will be disappointed to find out that back then they came across as more like cold loving cannibal naked meth heads then lonely Wampas wanting hugs from Jedis and the occasional Tauntaun jerky treat.

The Milwaukee Journal. – Google News Archive Search

Sea Monsters are awesome. What’s even more awesome than that? Live blogging your investigation of said sea monster in 1855! How is that even possible? In 1855 the New York Times was on the cutting edge of tech journalism utilizing telegraphs and locomotives to report the news live from the scene:

Having received this morning very private information, a vague account of the discovery of another sea-serpent near our city, we immediately dispatched seventeen of our reporters to the spot, having first “chartered” the “exclusive” right of the telegraph, and eleven locomotives.

By securing an communications connection via telegraph, reporters were able to send back a blow-by-blow account of their investigation as it unfolded.

Two minutes past 10 o’clock A.M – Serpent’s head seen – struck at one of the party with a stick – blow missed – terrible splashing.

One o’clock P.M. – Serpent showing himself frequently; struck at by Zedekiah Hornbush; club hit Zeke Williams; fight; puddle very rily.

Two o’clock P.M. – Serpent hit by a boy with a stone; dove when hit with a triple bellow – (that sounded as if it came from a neighboring pasture,) rose to surface again; hit by Dutchman; blood flowing from Serpent’s nose; awful scene; contortions of reptile; final capture.

What was this mysterious creature that Zedekiah and Zeke fearlessly confronted with their clubs? The report doesn’t quite get into specifics other than to say it may be of the “Garter” species – which suggests that it’s what we call a Garter snake today. They point out that there is no doubt he was in some relation to the Serpent that tempted Eve, “as he looks very wicked”. Wicked indeed. Remember this was four years before Darwin published The Origin of Species.

The story is a fascinating read and well worth checking out: Sea-Serpent in Wisconsin–another Monster–Terrible… – View Article – The New York Times

Inspired by this and recent accounts of a nearby sea monster, the Weird Things staff is contemplating live blogging its own expedition to find such a creature. We’ll keep you posted.

It’s been less than 20 years since the first report of an elusive blood-drinking monster referred to by local Puerto Rican farmers as El Chupacabra, and already the creature has become a cryptozoological stalwart, amassing news clippings from a growing number of disparate nations and settling its grotesque body down into an ever-deepening pop cultural niche. Certainly, the creature’s speedy rise to cryptid infamy is attributable to the Internet and globalized media. More than that, though, El Chupacabra is a result of the modern age encroaching upon an agricultural working class that, for the first time, found their dogmatic perception of nature challenged.

El Chupacabra’s legend didn’t start with a reported sighting, but rather with the discovery of several exsanguinated goat carcasses that bore what appeared to be a distinctive, three-holed puncture wound. Local farmers, whose inherited knowledge of area wildlife functions at an almost genetic level, understandably panicked at the sight of this wholly unfamiliar, and seemingly effortless, brutality. Especially given that Puerto Rico is an island, making the natural or forced migration of distant land mammals virtually impossible, it’s understandable that people succumbed to a kind of fearful origami, folding their terror into a fantastical shape that seemed primed for tri-toothed goat sucking – El Chupacabra, a spined monster, about the size of a large dog, that looks at once mammalian and reptilian. Supernatural-obsessed fringe media outlets in North America began obsessing over the beast and, within months, the number of alleged sightings skyrocketed.

What the Puerto Rican farmers didn’t know was that the panther, a cunning predator, had recently been illegally imported and introduced into the country’s biosphere. Meanwhile, industrial expansion, human population growth and construction had had a devastating effect on the eco-systems of Mexico and the American Southwest. Many coyotes and wild dogs lost their homes and found natural food sources dwindling. Often, malnutrition and mange caused these animals to lose their fur, develop hideous scabs and become increasingly desperate and vicious. Alternative prey, like farm animals, became a necessity for the newly displaced coyote population. These sick, desperate and grotesque-looking animals, in feeding themselves, nourished the Chupacabra legend, and despite the indisputable fact that a majority of sighted Chupacabras shared notable physical similarities with diseased coyotes, the media frenzy continued.
Eventually, the UFO-obsessed paranormal community embraced El Chupacabra, and employed it in their indefatigable search for truth.

Wednesday: El Chupacabra and E.T.

Following a horrified statewide fascination with the Jersey Devil that peaked in 1909 with a week of non-stop sightings, general panic and even a statement from the Philadelphia Zoo theorizing that the devil was actually a kangaroo fitted with artificial wings, reports of the monster died down and New Jersey’s focus turned to the lawless, bandit-bred Pineys and, of course, World War I. The devil was sighted on and off throughout the 1920s and ‘30s without much regularity and certainly without the mass hysteria that had followed prior encounters.

As years passed, sightings began to dwindle; the legend itself seemed to be quietly nestling down into the annals of folklore, allowing a new generation of anthropomorphized paranoia, from biggie-sized irradiated wildlife to probe-happy telepathic saucer men, to terrify the nation. Eventually, in 1957, an unidentifiable animal carcass was discovered in a burned out section of the Pine Barrens by the Department of Conservation. The charred, mostly skeletal remains were declared to be those of the Jersey Devil, and slowly word spread that the monster was deceased.

In 1960, however, a story that had manifested out of fear, persisted out of the Piney’s cunning and quieted in the wake of modernity and the resultant demystification of America’s wilderness, was suddenly resurrected out of local pride. Recognizing that a bankable hallmark of New Jersey culture had flat-lined in the national consciousness, a group of merchants in Camden, NJ, offered a $10,000 reward for the devil’s capture and promised to construct a paddock for the creature to scream and clop and fly around in. Though the reward was never claimed, stories of the creature persisted, and by the end of 1990s, film, television, hockey and toys had all tipped their hats to the devil.

Even as the 20th century dragged its belly across New Jersey, leaving new highways and the virulent culs de sac of suburban sprawl in its wake, the Pine Barrens remained largely untouched. In 1978, they were declared the country’s first National Preserve and remain under the protection of the Federal government, as do the secrets they contain. With the forest intact and the story of the Jersey Devil laced into the byzantine braid of history, the immortality often ascribed to the creature has been made a reality, turning an agent of death into an icon of tradition through the inadvertent alchemy of fiction.

The story goes that, in 1735, Deborah Leeds, exhausted mother of twelve and wife of a drunken roustabout, discovered that she was pregnant with her thirteenth child. In a fit of a despaired frustration, she cried out to the heavens, “Let this one be a devil!” Devil or not, the child was supposedly born sporting the head of a horse, the wings of a bat, the legs of a goat and a serpent’s tail (some folks even ascribe antlers to the pitiable beast). After rampaging through the Leeds’ home, the creature flew out the chimney and into the New Jersey Pine Barrens, where it has loitered and skulked ever since.

As much as the story of a cursed demon rounding out a procreation-happy pauper’s unholy baker’s dozen bears all the hallmarks of classic European superstition, including fear of the number 13 and a hint of the kind of supernatural admonishments whispered through ghettos by the ruling class in the name controlling the urban lower-class population, the creature is a child not just of his colonial parentage, but also of the harsh and unfamiliar Pine Barrens. The “barren” in the name ought to give some indication of how the surroundings were perceived – the sand in which the pine forest grows is completely unfit for any kind of commercial farming, what few mineral resources lay buried beneath the ground are too sparse to warrant mining, and the trees are all softwood pines, making even logging pointless, given the number of hardwood oak-hickory forests that blanket the northeastern United States.

Colonists had never encountered such a landscape, and were both frightened by the land’s uncanny geology and frustrated by its lack of utility. The devil, a monster born from a curse on human fertility and destined to forever stalk a blighted wasteland, was created to provide people with a shambling, winged reason to fear venturing out into the eerie pine forest. It came to pass that hard-working families confined themselves to the regions beyond the borders of the woods, while the rough-hewn and bizarre fringes of society openly embraced the Pine Barrens as an unmonitored, lawless playground, complete with a vicious demon sentry.

Wednesday: Bootleggers and bandits – friends of the devil

Weird Things Culture Researcher Matt Finaly takes a weekly look into the social, political and cultural climates of a populace at the time it was affected by a legendary paranormal, extraterrestrial or cryptid phenomenon. It appears on Tuesdays…

A lake isn’t a lake without a lake monster. Or, so it would seem. With more than 250 serpentine leviathans of varying size and ferocity trolling the dark reefs and hidden inlets of lakes worldwide, these arcane monstrosities are to inland bodies of standing water what Zagat ratings are to classy restaurants, providing immediate validation by way of an instantly identifiable symbol – a dark, long-necked silhouette asserting a mysterious vigilance in the dying warmth of deep orange light squeezed from a setting sun.

Sometimes more mascots than monsters, these aquatic behemoths are often as much unwitting chamber of commerce employees as they are enduring mysteries of cryptozoology. While Nessie, the stalwart cover girl of lake monster commercialization, may be the most ubiquitous of these creatures, North America has its own heavy-weight lacusine cryptid, with an equally cloying nickname – Champ.

For a supposed Mezozoic-era reptile hidden deep within the black, icy craw of Lake Champlain, Champ has become a surprisingly active community member in the various cities and towns that hug the shores surrounding the 125-mile-long body of water. His solemn reptilian visage adorns a variety of commercial signage, his wooden doppelganger smiles confidently from the courthouse lawn in Port Henry, New York, and his mere existence is lauded via fly balls and grounders by the Vermont Lake Monsters, Vermont’s only minor league baseball affiliate. Since the first reported sighting in the early 1870s, everyone from research scientists to P.T. Barnum have felt the scaly allure of this North American legend. As the world amasses an ever-growing role call of lake monsters to shout from dockside tea-shirt stands and minor league baseball stadiums, it seems appropriate to take one such monster, America’s own Champ, and look at the lake, legends and lives that, in just the right light and from enough of a distance, almost look like a giant, aquatic serpent posed stoically against the horizon.

The legend of Champ, or, at least, the legend that became the legend of Champ, actually pre-dates the first sighting by centuries. Both the Iriquois and Abenaki tribes, who lived beside the dark, glacier-wrought lake before it bore the name of French explorer Samuel De Champlain, traditionally submitted offerings to an entity that they claimed was hidden beneath the lake’s still, black waters. Still, most of the polytheistic native cultures had water spirits or other aquatic deities that they ritually attempted to placate and satisfy in order to ensure full harvests and good health. The Iriquois, who supplicated a being in Lake Champlain (then called Lake Ondakina), also made offerings to the nearby Niagara falls, annually pitching a white canoe, filled with fruits, vegetables and a virgin, over the roaring cataract and onto the foam-addled rockbed below. Researching America’s many lake monsters reveals that almost every one can be traced back to a Native American legend that, more often than not, was boorishly literalized through the polarizing lens of European culture, turning a tale like that of Champ from a story about the living soul of the water into a story about a giant friggin’ lake snake.

The first few reported sightings occurred between 1871 and 1873, around the time that an increasingly industrialized America began seeing mountains and lakes as geological obstacles to be overcome, rather than natural spectacles to be wondered over. As such, the first sighting occurred when a group of men working on laying one of the four railroad lines that carried packed train cars over the water-logged expanses of New York, Vermont and Quebec that compose the lake witnessed a giant snake-like creature in the water. The next encounter was reported after a sight-seeing steamboat either collided with, or was disturbed by the wake from (reports are, at best, sketchy), some sort of underwater beast. The third sighting, made by a child who saw the creature at a distance from the shores of the lake, is worth mentioning in the context of the others because, in the child’s report of the event, he explicitly stated that the animal made “a noise like a steamboat.”

These sightings all underscore a larger point about the changing landscape of America and the development of technology that, in cases like that of the tourist steamboat, allows, and in cases like that of the railroad workers, forces, people to come in contact with formerly unfamiliar natural environments. The third sighting demonstrates this strange dichotomy – as new and exciting technological developments enter the cultural vernacular, so, to, do previously rarified elements of the natural world. In the eyes of a child, the natural thing that astounds him – a sea monster – is described in terms of a corresponding technological development that astounds him – a steamboat. A lot of these folks had only recently been given the opportunity to chuff out into the black center of the lake, borne out by exhalations of pressurized steam, or stare out, between hammer strikes, across a sprawling, adjacent plane of bruise-colored water. A common animal of uncommon size would be monstrous, fantastical and unfamiliar to an observer unaccustomed to the thriving, multifaceted eco-system of the lake. Not to mention, once one person believes that they’ve seen something extraordinary, others follow suit.

With the railroads quickly turning America into a manic stitch-work of spikes and ties, it only made sense for P.T. Barnum to purchase a train and make the most of his profession. “P.T. Barnum’s Traveling World’s Fair, Great Roman Hippodrome and Greatest Show on Earth” was already proving hugely successful for Barnum when he got wind of the increasing number of lake monster sightings coming out of the New York and Vermont areas. Always as much a debunker as a showman, Barnum immediately offered $5,000 for the carcass of Champ, stating that if such a creature existed, he had to have it as part of his fantastical cabinet of allegedly natural curiosities. If the fevered testimony of a dozen amazed eye witnesses wasn’t enough to convince the American Northeast that a reptilian goliath was swimming figure-eights beneath the growing number of railroad trestles, ferries and lighthouse beams that criss-crossed and skirted each other across the surface of Lake Champlain, the winking endorsement of the Prince of Humbugs certainly was. The local obsession that, over the past century, has, ultimately, done more good for the binocular industry than any facet of modern biology, was born.

In the 20th century, after many obsolete steamboats were scrapped and rail lines were torn up or abandoned to make room for highways, other technological advancements, especially the development and production of consumer-grade photography equipment and video cameras, ensured an enduring audience for America’s most notorious sea monster. Champ has been embroiled in photograph doctoring scandals, subjected to state-of-the-art echolocation techniques and even forced to brave the emoticon banner ads and inane talkbacks of YouTube, starring in a highly disputed, recently-removed video in which he darted beneath a fisherman’s boat.

As the legend perpetuated, giving way to the aforementioned statuary, logos and mascotdom, Champ has taken on a kind of mythic status, larger and more indelible than the enigmatic sum of 300 reported sightings. More than just an urban legend or cautionary rejoinder delivered in the name of safe swimming, Champ represents the life-effusing quintessence of a region; he is bound to the lake, but master of its waters, and possessed of eyes that have witnessed the triumphs and tragedies of Champlain’s beaches, inlets and people – people who, in turn, claim to have, in fleeting seconds lost quickly to the white glare of the afternoon sun or the eldritch darkness of evening water, witnessed him.

In this way, Champ has once again become the stuff of Iriquois legend, bestowing fortune upon towns who offer up small tokens, like car wash signs and minor league baseball, in tribute to his enduring existence.

Previously, this week, on Weird Things.

• A few tips for the novice Bigfoot hunter.

• Could the Son of Sam, a UFO investigating Air Force base and the birth of popular science fiction have helped create the Dover Demon?

• Michael Jackson may be dead, but his ghost is on a world tour.

• What happens, when myriad ghosts, have chosen to haunt a house, stop beings polite and start getting real? They say some really kooky stuff, that’s what.

• Rhode Island has never had a Bigfoot sighting, but that might be about to change.

Enjoy the weekend, as always, send weird photos, stories, sounds and happenings to JustinRobertYoung@Gmail.

In this column, we look at two pop-cultural interpretations of ubiquitous Weird legends as portrayed by two narrative television programs… like how Sam Malone on Cheers and Al Swearengen on Deadwood both manipulated the politics of an entire town from behind the counter of a bar. But with monsters. Enjoy.

This week:
“Bigfoot is blurry.”

South Park, Episode 1×03, “Volcano”

The Six Million Dollar Man, Episodes 3×16 and 3×17, “The Secret of Bigfoot”

Bigfoot has always occupied a unique place in the pantheon of American cryptids. And I use “American” very deliberately here to suggest that, while sasquatches and yetis and abominable snowmen are found (and feared) the world over, Bigfoot is a specifically American cultural institution. Even the name “Bigfoot,” a simple, almost cute, descriptive moniker, suggests what ultimately seems to be the larger mystery that Americans wrestle with when they ponder the elusive, hirsute giant. It isn’t “Is he fact or fiction?,” but rather “Is he friend or foe?”

Both South Park and The Six Million Dollar man mused upon this question. One employed the query in revealing larger truths about pop culture’s grip on folklore. The other simply provided an answer… a weird, ridiculous answer.

In the first-season episode “Volcano,” Stan’s uncle takes the boys on a hunting trip while, simultaneously, the titular volcano threatens to destroy South Park. Cartman is mocked for telling the legend of Scuzzlebutt, a terrifying basket-weaving creature with a celery arm and a Patrick Duffy leg, and Stan’s masculinity is questioned when he refuses to kill any animals. In the end, the volcano erupts, and, though the town manages to save itself, Stan, Kyle and Cartman are rescued by the real Scuzzlebutt, who weaves a basket to carry them safely over the lava. Upon reaching safety, Stan immediately attempts to prove his manliness by shooting Scuzzlebutt in the head, which only ends up making everyone mad.

Meanwhile, back in the ‘70s, in the epic two-part episode “The Secret of Bigfoot,” Steve Austin links the disappearance of two scientists to Bigfoot. After tracking the creature down and trying to communicate with him, only to be violently rebuffed, The Six Million Dollar Man fights the creature, which takes flight after Austin tears off its arm. Austin then pursues the monster to a cave, where Bigfoot is revealed to be an intelligent android built by aliens to guard their mountain base.

Though created more than two decades apart, both of these storylines engage with the uniquely American consideration (maybe even hope) that Bigfoot is a benign, gentle creature, perhaps more human than animal. Scuzzlebutt (an obvious Bigfoot analog) is revealed to be a magnanimous craftsman who puts himself in danger to save the children. During Steve Austin’s initial encounter with the beast, Austin tries repeatedly to talk not just at the creature, but with it. How can we use these distinctly American narratives to uncover how Bigfoot has been sculpted into a national icon?

The Six Million Dollar Man two-part episode is interesting as an artifact from the beginning of America’s pop cultural fixation on Bigfoot. From the discovery of a giant footprint to the first sighting of the creature ambling through the woods (a clear homage to the infamous Patterson-Gimlin footage), the show’s portrayal of Bigfoot (up until the sensationalist, ratings-hungry robot reveal) hinges on his starkly uneven elusiveness-to-size ratio and the taxonomical theory that he is a missing evolutionary link between primates and man. While it seems obvious to regard the latter point, evolutionary kinship, as the root of the country’s fixation, it’s important to consider that Bigfoot-like creatures are a globally reported phenomenon, but few others are afforded the same national affection (or adorable nickname) as Bigfoot. Even the alien robot version of Bigfoot was portrayed as a misunderstood, intelligent alien robot. While it’s true that his bipedal posture and supposedly humanoid face lend Bigfoot a bit more hugability than, say, the horse-headed, bat-winged Jersey Devil, there’s a huge leap being made from possible threat to anonymous creature to probable friend.

So, what’s aiding Americans’ minds in making this jump? Well, on television, the Jersey Devil is going to be an anonymous puppet or special effect. Bigfoot, on the other hand, because of this supposed evolutionary kinship, can be played by a human. Everyone who watched The Six Million Dollar Man, for example, saw the creature as portrayed by a Muhammad Ali, and that image was branded into the cultural consciousness. To oversimplify: America sees Muhammad Ali as Bigfoot, America loves Muhammad Ali, ergo, etc. And that’s just one portrayal on one show. Bigfoot was a fixture of narrative TV in the ‘70s; the more people see a monster personified, the less they see the monster.

Here’s where South Park comes into it – while Scuzzlebutt’s Patrick Duffy leg seems like a silly pop cultural non sequitur, it manages to perfectly articulate this precise point: folklore is no less susceptible to pop culture than music or film. In his story, Cartman characterizes the creature as a bloodthirsty beast that kills people in order to “add pieces to its deformed body.” This quote almost reads like hyperbolized meta-commentary on pop culture itself, and the way it’s constantly assembling and re-assembling its own amorphous form and the form of all of it components, Bigfoot included.

The underlying non-threatening folksiness hinted at by Scuzzlebutt’s celery arm and penchant for basket weaving reveal another constructed trait that Americans have projected onto Bigfoot; If it’s assumed that Bigfoot is, in fact, more human than primate, his humanity is an older version, untouched by technology and the social complexities of the modern world. Given America’s obsession with idealizing an unobtainable past, it makes sense that people would find something attractive and mysterious about this kind of basic humanity, and the way Bigfoot supposedly carries it around inside of him, like he’s the last fluent speaker of some ancient, forgotten language.

The real Bigfoot remains a mystery. In the meantime, the country has stitched together the Bigfoot it loves. It has a Muhammad Ali leg, an idealized past arm and a wealth of the other disparate pieces of our national identity that have been offered up and subsumed in the name of creating a truly American monster.

Matt Finley is a regular Weird Things researcher currently based in Cleveland. His blog can be found here and you can follow him on Twitter at @Finfizzler.

photo credit: Josh Lowe | Thrash Magazine

Along with the islands of Hawaii, Rhode Island is the only American state to never officially recorded a Bigfoot sighting. Ever.

Ken DeCosta , founder and director of Rhode Island Society for the Examination of Unusual Phenomena, chalks it up to geography. Non-existant are the dense forests of Pennsylvania or Oregon that seem to breed sightings. If you’re looking for the King of Cryptids in the Biggest Little State in the Union, you might want to get comfortable.

“Catch up on some of your reading,” adds DeCosta.

But past experiences don’t alway portend future results, which is why Ken is excited about a new lead. A story from a middle-aged housewife that could very well break Rhode Island’s streak of futility. DeCosta recalls speaking with the woman, who was reluctant to tell her tale to even her husband for fear she’d look crazy.

In September of 2003, the then 44-year-old mother of two drove up Tower Hill Road when a bipedal, hairy, 6-foot beast walked in front of her car. After locking eyes with the creature and getting a good look at it’s ape-like facial features, the massive beast slammed it’s hands into the hood of her vehicle, leaving a few dents.

So this summer, DeCosta and his gang are going to head out to Tower Hill Road and stake out the scene. It most likely will be fruitless so RISE UP also plans to investigate a few other Tower Hill phenomenon including phantom hitchhikers and an intensely creepy specter of a dead little boy’s bicycle reported by passing motorists.

But maybe, just maybe, that woman was right. And maybe, just maybe, Ken and his team can catch a glimpse.

Hear that Hawaii?

Tear Up The Town is a weekly column investigating the social, political and cultural climates of a populace at the time it was affected by a legendary paranormal, extraterrestrial or cryptid phenomenon. It appears on Tuesdays…

For two warm spring nights in 1977, a monster trolled the quiet streets of Dover, Delaware, haunting passersby with its large, almost-featureless head and glowing, empty stare.

When one considers that none of the witnesses to the so-called “Dover Demon” (dubbed as such by the press) were in direct contact immediately before or after the alleged sightings, and all of their descriptions of the creature varied slightly (orange eyes versus green eyes, etc.), an orchestrated hoax seems unlikely. But a microcosmic case of teenage mass hysteria built around a confused infant moose and a pop cultural zeitgeist that piled a brand-new sensationalist Leonard Nimoy television program onto known UFO tracking at a local airforce base, a rampaging serial killer and an imminent star war?

Many skeptics believe it isn’t a coincidence that all three witnesses (Bill Bartlett, age 17; John Baxter, age 15; and Abby Brabham, age 15) to the spindly, large-eyed, four-foot-tall, melon-headed creature, which was witnessed clambering along Dover roadsides on April 21st and 22nd, 1977, were adolescents; even after disregarding the high school prank theory, some experts believe the Dover Demon, a veritable celebrity among American cryptids, was probably a woefully misidentified baby moose. Others admit the possibility that it could have been the product of a covert genetic engineering experiment. Sure, certain spirit hunters and cryptophiles with a new-age bent believe that the witnesses’ age demographic suggests that the alleged creature was related to a poltergeist, appearing only to those whose hormones and bio-rythyms were in continuous flux, and phrases like “extra-terrestrial” and “inter-dimensional being” have been tossed around, but the same trixy pubescence that collectively robs the witnesses of credibility also helps explain how a demon was born.

Though the Hollywood extra-terrestrial boom that began in 1977 with the May release of Star Wars (followed almost immediately by the November release of Close Encounters of the Third Kind) was still a month away when 17-year-old Bill Bartlett saw the bulbous head and shining eyes of an unearthly quadruped reflected in his headlights as he drove home through Dover on April 21st, a cultural obsession with UFOs and the paranormal was already a fixture of American life. Starting with the release of the Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot footage in 1967 and the publicized discontinuation of the U.S. Air Force’s UFO research division, Project Blue Book, in 1969, and bolstered by a sudden spike in reported UFO sightings in 1973 (The fact that the government was no longer searching for the truth about flying saucers clearly put the perceived responsibility back into the hands of the public), the culture was in the throes of an obsession.

Meanwhile, New York City, just three hours north of Dover, was caught in a media frenzy as the .44 Caliber Killer, later identified as David Berkowitz, roamed through the city committing a mounting series of violent shootings. More than half of his, as of that time, 11 victims were teenagers, one of whom had been killed on April 17th, just four days before the first Dover Demon sighting. With news of the seemingly random killings and the ensuing investigation garnering play-by-play national coverage, it’s not unreasonable to imagine a country of teenagers, suddenly confronted with the truth of their own mortality, feeling, understandably, on edge.

And that’s not even taking into account that Dover Air Force Base, which tracked and verified several local UFO sightings throughout the early ‘70s, is located just southeast of the city. Local teenagers who were already exposed to, and demographically poised to take the brunt of, a burgeoning cultural interest in the paranormal would have certainly been aware that within the corporate limits of their hometown existed a government facility that was on record as having monitored unexplained phenomena.

Certainly after the release of Star Wars (and well after the Dover sightings), a rash of alien-themed narrative television shows and films appeared, including Battlestar Galactica, Mork and Mindy, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Alien, etc. (1978 even saw a short-lived television adaptation of Project Blue Book, entitled “Project UFO”). Based on these dates, one might draw the faulty conclusion that the Dover Demon sightings seem to hold more water as legitimate evidence of an undeniably ridiculous looking cryptid stalking The Blue Hen State, given that they occurred before the start of the pop cultural science fiction renaissance, but I would argue that it actually makes more sense, and verges on unsurprising, that sightings like those reported in Dover happened prior to the debut of the above popular entertainments.

Pop culture isn’t a proactive phenomenon. It simply reacts to the wider cultural milieu, absorbing current social, political and scientific thought trends and translating those into the narrative structures that humans seem to require to bring already-present ideas into the sphere of general consciousness. This description, of course, is a gross oversimplication, but the point is that by the time TV and media started addressing instances of paranormal phenomena, the country was already deeply concerned with, and afraid of, all things unearthly.

Next, I’d like to posit that, in assimilating national fears and then reproducing visions of them, pop culture goes through two stages: addressing the fear and answering the fear. For example, in the late ‘60s, supposed Bigfoot footage landed all over the news and the government stopped officially researching UFOs. These and other events (the promise of continued manned space exploration, a sudden spate of books about The Bermuda Triangle, the continuing growth of the new age movement, etc.) led to a growing, unarticulated fear of the paranormal and the supernatural in America. As in every instance of irrational national fear or obsession, the first things the entertainment industry begins to produce are documentaries and dramatizations of actual events. 1975 saw the airing of a made for TV movie called The UFO Incident, which portrayed the supposedly true story of an East Coast couple who, years after a strange experience on a mountain road, discover, through hypnosis, that they were abducted by, and experimented on, by aliens. Even more telling, on April 17th, 1977, just four days before the first Dover Demon sighting (and on the night of the fifth and sixth Berkowitz murders), “In Search Of…”, a Leanord Nimoy-hosted television documentary series that investigated all corners of pseudo-science and sensationalist natural anomalies, ranging from UFOs to Atlantis to The Elephant Man, premiered with an episode about communicating with plants and, more importantly, an opening title sequence that featured a laundry list of topics to come, including extraterrestrials, witchcraft and monsters.

It’s only after a fear is addressed through such documentaries and dramatizations, like those stated above, which simply reduce and collate the most striking and mysterious aspects of the terrorizer in question into a comprehensive consumable piece, that people begin to create answers to the fear by constructing fictions that both put a face to the unknown and present a clear resolution in which, generally, the physical manifestation of our terror is either destroyed or robbed of its power over us. For example, after “realistically” re-enacting the nation’s collective UFO fear in “The UFO Incident,” Close Encounters of the Third Kind presented a fictionalized version of an alien encounter in which the aliens abducting humans and staging high-speed flyovers are reveled to be friendly explorers reaching out to humanity through a simple, delightful tune. Fear momentarily allayed.

The Dover Demon sightings took place in the middle of a cultural shift wherein all of the country’s supernatural curiosity and fear was out in the open, being actively documented and dramatized, but few contemporary fictions had been created to soothe the American psyche. On a spring night, in a quiet town, as the cultural climate around the adolescent witnesses erupted with teen murders, supernatural documentaries, UFO sightings and commercials for film after film about cosmic misadventure, who knows what the hormonal, pubescent mind will do when confronted by something as atypical as a newborn moose, much less some disgusting genetic experiment gone awry. Add Fleetwood Mac’s then-top-selling album Rumours into the mix, and it’s a shock that there wasn’t significant property damage.

Matt Finley is a regular contributor to Weird Things and is currently based in Cleveland. His works can be found at Finfizzler.wordpress.com.

Please follow the cues for this YouTube playlist throughout the post.

In the sewers of North Carolina lies a strange creature. Pulsating and wiggling in the first video on this playlist. Could it be of alien origin? CHUD? A metaphor of a chemical society gone too far?

Apparently none of the above. According to the How Stuff Works blog this thing is called Bryozoa. It’s a 350-million year old primitive animal life form comprised of smaller, ickier life forms. Which brings us to video number two, as it happens, down on the Bayou they don’t take to kindly to 350-million year old primitive animal life forms. Watch as a pair of Bryozoa are blown to bits by way of a M1 Springfield 30.06 rifle. And Rage Against The Machine.

But just when things have come to a shocking conclusion, we get the cliff hanger. Those gun nuts got the wrong guy/thing. The inquisitive minds at Deep Sea News consulted an expert on Bryozoa and he claims the sewer video features a pulsating look at Tubifex (video number three, please) a collection of worms that normally are found at the edge of polutted streams. In the NC sewer video, he claims that they’ve gathered around each other and the movements are caused by one worm contracting, which stimulated all the others to move.

Credit to Brian Brushwood and Dodd Vickers for digging through this mess on Twitter last night.

We were saddened today to find out from Cryptomundo that Chris Davis, the originator of the South Carolina Lizard Man legend was shot to death at his home in a drug related incident.

According to Davis’ reports: on June 29, 1988 he was changing a flat tire at 2 AM on his way home from work, when he was attacked by a seven foot tall, humanoid, bipedal lizard creature. In Davis’ account he was able to start the car and drive away while the lizard man clung to the top, eventually falling off when Davis swerved the car from side to side.

This is how the American crypto-classic Lizard Man was born. The question now is will the story live on without its central character?

Bobby Clarke, a ferry boat driver from Manitoba, took this Bigfoot footage in 2005. The short film, taken with an out of focus camcorder created lots of media buzz and lead to a Bigfoot investigation by now defunct news program “A Current Affair”. Cryptomundo recounts the incident and reviews the tape. Do you think it’s really worth a second look?

Above is a stabilized version of the latest purported video of Champ the Monster of Lake Champlain. Compare that to the video of a common fresh water otter below, and the mystery of Lake Champlain starts to unravel. Check out the updated investigation on Cryptomundo.com, complete with enhanced videos of the sighting.

photo credit: Tom Scholes

The Loch Ness Monster and other dino-cryptids have captivated the imaginations and hopes of millions of people all over the world. It would be really cool if dinosaurs were still alive today. But how much truth is there to this claim? Are there really prehistoric giants currently roaming the earth or have they all gone the way of the fossils above? Benjamin Radford, renowned paranormal investigator tackles this very question in a Live Science article.

“Champ” the Lake Champlain monster is back bothering residents of Burlington, Vermont. The above image is a screen shot from the latest Lake Champlain monster video of a mysterious dinosaur like creature crossing the water. Alas we could not post it here because they took away the embed code, but Cryptomundo has a great write up on analyzing this latest video, as well as studying the history of the Lake Champlain Monster.

photo credit: Loren Javier

Something is amiss in Siberia once again. The wild leek crop, that is a staple food of the Shor people of the Siberian tundra, is being gobbled up by an unknown creature. The cryptid takes only leek plants and leaves only numerous, large, mammalian footprints.

This is the same region that Cryptozoologist Igor Burtsev mounted his failed expedition to search for yetis sighted near Azasskaya Cave. Weirdthings reported on that back in March. Fourteen more sightings of a big-foot like creature with reddish brown fur have been reported in the region. Maybe Burtsev should try stuffing his tent with leeks and let the Yetis come to him next time around.

We all remember the Montauk Monster that washed up along the shores of Long Island last year. The above video was taken in Southold, NY of Montauk Monster 2. The people over at Montauk-monster.com think the two are the same beast, what do you make of it?

Nessie sightings have been on the decline in recent years and kilt clad investigators seeking desperately to try dinosaur haggis for the first time have turned up nothing in the placid Scottish Loch. In light of Nessie’s waning glory, a new cryptid has emerged to Champion the waterways of the North Atlantic in its stead: The Channel Creature.

This video of the Channel Creature, reportedly taken off the shore of scenic Dover, has the crypto world abuzz. Many seem to think that Nessie’s salt water counterpart is the exact same Scottish Plesiosaur we already know and love. Speculation abounds that this sighting lends credence to the theory that Loch Ness has a secret underwater tunnel leading to the sea. Some even speculate that Nessie was moved to the ocean by concerned extraterrestrials . We say it’s foolish to assume the two are the same creature, it’s a big ocean out there and there is room for more than one water bound dinosaur in the UK’s lexicon of cryptids.

Or more likely still: the same mundane visual illusions that create pixelated, dark blobs in grainy videos taken at Loch Ness, are the same visual illusions that create pixelated, dark blobs in grainy videos taken on the shores of Dover.

The origins of this video are confusing, apparently it has been making the rounds in Russia as a real sighting of Bigfoot somewhere in the English speaking world. Experts have determined this video to be a hoax. What do you make of it?

For those of you who haven’t heard of the Bunyip, it’s Australia’s folklore equivalent of Bigfoot. Aborigine myth tells of a large, furry, wetlands creature that was described as “demon” or “devil” in their native tongue. When western settlers came to colonize Australia, the legend of the Bunyip grew to much larger proportions, but there has still never been a single confirmed sighting of the cryptid.

Mike Conley from McDowell News has suggested that a now extinct marsupial, called the Diprotodon, might hold the key to the mystery.

Artist’s rendering of a Diprotodon. Image Credit: ArthurWeasley

Diprotodon was the largest species of marsupial ever to walk the earth. It’s extinction 40,000 years ago coincided with the arrival of humans. Might it be possible that a few of these beasts lived on in the Australian Outback, undisturbed till much more recently? Could aboriginal myths about the legendary Bunyip have been past down from tribes and people that actually lived at the same time as the Bunyip? We like to speculate.

photo credit: RaeA

The classic dead Bigfoot photo above first appeared on Cryptomundo in 2006. Now artist David Lowe has created a series of photoshopped images depicting how the image was created. Needless to say, the featured cryptid never did exist. Check out this great piece of critical thinking at Cryptomundo.com.

Lake Kanas is China’s deepest freshwater lake. It is also home to Chinese equivalent of the Loch Ness Monster. The video above shows a scene of something moving quite quickly over the surface of the water. It’s not really clear what it is, but this video is just about as compelling any video evidence that has ever been put forward supporting the existence of Nessie (i.e. Not very). Check it out and let us know what you think.

Aerial photo of Lake Kanas

The Falmouth beast, from Cornwall in the UK, has been spotted again. And according to locals it looks like a Liofoxaroo. Check out the Falmouth Packet to find out more about the bizarre crypto creature.

An artist's model of 'Kusshi', the Japanese version of the Loch Ness Monster.

The Loch Ness monster’s lesser known Japanese counterpart, called ‘Kusshi’ by locals, has been enticing Hokkaido Cryptozoologists for decades. cryptomundo.com has a full report documenting the history of ‘Kusshi’ sightings.

A big cat, caught on tape, has been attacking livestock in Poland, freaking out local farmers and residents. Poland doesn’t have much in the way of big cat populations, so a mystified group from the Krakau Zoo took hair samples from dead animals to determine the beast’s origins.

Turns out it’s a Snow Leopard. You might recognize the Snow Leopard from the BBC Series ‘Planet Earth’, in which a camera crew spent three months in the mountains of Afghanistan to capture seven seconds of footage of the endangered felid. We bet the BBC team is going to be miffed this week when they find out that some Pole with a camcorder got as much footage as they did without risking life and limb.

photo credit: newagecrap

So how in the world did a Snow Leopard, indigenous to the mountainous Central Asian region, wind up so far away from home?

The above image shows the Snow Leopard’s natural trekking grounds, this particular Snow Leopard is roughly 2500 miles out of its element. So we’re guessing it either walked a very long way without being spotted up until now, or it escaped from somewhere. There are over 230 captive Snow Leopards in Europe and here at weirdthings.com, we’d like to think that someone at an Eastern European zoo is too embarrassed to tell their boss that they lost the leopard.

Our thoughts go out to the frightened farmers of Poland, while local radio continues to give big cat warnings, telling people to stay in doors after dark.

photo credit: Jeremy Burgin

Prompted by reports of human like creatures near a Siberian cave, a team of investigators lead by Igor Burtsev from the International Center for Hominology is heading out to the tundra to see what they can see:

The local administration has so far received 14 written reports from residents of far-off villages who allegedly saw yetis near the Azasskaya cave. According to the reports, the creatures were heavyset, about two meters’ tall and looking a lot like bears. Their bodies were covered in red and black fur, and they could climb trees.

If they’re successful we might have finally found the elusive Yeti. If not then hopefully this turns out to be some sort of other cool new species we didn’t know about before.

photo credit: iwantamonkey

The Bigfoot Enthusiast Group: Elusive Primates of North America (EPNA) claims that they have found a primate like Handprint on Sand Mountain in Alabama. The discovering group from the Alabama Chapter of the EPNA came across the apparent handprint on an expedition in the Sand Mountain area, where they also heard strange animal noises:

“We heard something that sounded like a really mad cow vocal and then what sounded like a bear vocal,” Spearman said.

When the bear vocal drew closer, Spearman said, “All of a sudden we heard this vocal, like six deep, long, guttural growls. We know we upset what was there. We didn’t physically see anything.

“We did get vocalizations from that area in January as well, but we were unable to identify them. Lo and behold, we were watching Animal Planet and heard a similar vocal. An expert from Texas A&M University said it was an unknown primate with human texture vocalization.”

If Animal Planet confirmations and primate handprints don’t convince you, then maybe some of the other evidence on the EPNA’s website will win you over. We at weirdthings.com are still reluctantly skeptical until more compelling evidence can be found.