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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Dr. Karen Stollznow’s website

Find out which of the three used to wear a Spider-Man costume under his clothes and which ones just wore ladies underwear. Listen to them describe their plans to capture a sea beast, fight alligators and find proof of Son of Hogzilla. Also, it becomes painfully obvious that when Justin, Brian and Andrew are a dying alien civilization’s last chance for survival, it’s better to die screaming in the night then hope to see another tomorrow.

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Weird Things Live: Hunting the Night Creeper from Andrew Mayne on Vimeo.

Last Monday night in front of a live internet audience we set out to solve the mystery of the Night Creeper. Ghost? Frogman? Or something else? Although we’re pretty sure we figured it out, we haven’t definitively proved our theory. The mystery continues…

Running time 55 minutes.

Check out our photos of the scene on Flickr.

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!”

In the Michael Crichton book Congo and movie by the same name, he describes a race of super-apes almost on par with man in intelligence. Like much of Crichton’s work, he based this on science speculation. For thousands of years there have been stories of ape-men that fell outside our conventional definitions of humans, gorillas, chimps and orangutan.

In 500 BC, Hanno the Navigator, a Carthaginian explorer described this encounter off the Western coast of Africa:

At the terminus of Hanno’s voyage the explorer found an island heavily populated with what were described as hirsute and savage people. Attempts to capture the males failed, but three of the females were taken. These were so vicious they were killed, and their skins preserved for transport home to Carthage.

The name the intrepreters gave for them was “gorillae”. 2,000 years later explorers would use that word to describe modern day gorillas. But were they gorillas? Hanno described finding these “savage people” in a place far from where gorillas are known to inhabit (the historical version of the story is in Greek and not Hanno’s native Punic, suggesting it’s been repeatedly rewritten). Taking it at face value, it could be that Hanno found an isolated group of gorillas that went extinct. But if it was a distinct population of gorillas on that island, it’s very likely it was a unique species of gorilla with its own behaviors and characteristics (gorillas are now divided into two distinct species with two subspecies each).

By 1847, after the gorilla had been discovered by the West, we had a clearer picture of the major ape species: Humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutan. But since then stories of other species have persisted.

The 19th Century French-American explorer Paul du Chaillu described a species of ape whose behavior doesn’t quite describe what we know about chimpanzees or gorillas.

This ape, whose singular cry distinguishes at once from all its cougeners in these wilds, is remarkable, as bearing a closer resemblance to man than any other ape yet known. It is very rare and I was able to obtain but one specimen of it. The face is bare and black. the forehead is higher than any other ape, and the cranial capacity greater by measurement. The eyes are wider apart than any other ape. The nose is flat. The cheek bones are high and prominent, and the cheek sunken and lank. The sides of the face are covered with a growth of straight hair, which meeting under the chin like the human whiskers, gives the face a remarkably human look. The arms reach below the knee. The ears are very larger, and are more nearly like the human ear than those of other apes.

Saying that it was a “gorilla” or a “chimpanzee” isn’t as helpful of a classification as we might think. Natural history museums are filled with interesting specimens that push the boundaries of gorilla and chimpanzee taxonomy, but are still within those boundaries. A skull and a DNA test can tell us something about how a creature lived, but not the whole picture. A modern day Dane and a pygmy bushmen look about as different as you could imagine, but genetically they’re the same species.

Science encounters a lost race of apes
The idea that of a living chimpanzee or gorilla species with much different physical and behavioral traits (like the gorillas in Congo) got a big boost from the scientific community when credible reports began emerging from the Congo of a large ape that displayed both chimp and gorilla like behavior.

Shelley Williams PhD, a specialist in primate behavior had this encounter with the “Bili Apes” in the Congo: From Wikipedia

“We could hear them in the trees, about 10 m away, and four suddenly came rushing through the brush towards me. If this had been a mock charge they would have been screaming to intimidate us. These guys were quiet, and they were huge. They were coming in for the kill – but as soon as they saw my face they stopped and disappeared.”

Williams continues:

“The unique characteristics they exhibit just don’t fit into the other groups of apes,” says Williams. The apes, she argues, could be a new species unknown to science, a new subspecies of chimpanzee, or a hybrid of the gorilla and the chimp. “At the very least, we have a unique, isolated chimp culture that’s unlike any that’s been studied,”.

Genetically, evidence indicates the Bili Apes are identical with known chimpanzees. But there’s more to physiology and behavior than what’s encoded in the genes. While there are conflicting reports about the physical traits of the Bili Apes, the consensus is that they are larger than common chimps and much bolder.

Presently they are threatened by bush meat hunters and gold miners who are encroaching into their habitat.

Conclusion
With the verification that there is indeed a Bili Ape that has its own distinct behavior and appearance, it’s a reasonable hypothesis that there have been other species and sub-species of chimpanzee and gorilla in historic times with their own particular behavior and physiology that have since gone extinct.

That some of these were smart or closer to humans in behavior is not an unreasonable speculation. Given the friction that exists today between humans in the region and other humans as well as primates, it’s not hard to imagine their extinction being at least human influenced.

So if there was a race of super-apes, chances are we killed them. It’s the Planet of the Apes in reverse…

Bili Ape – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

From myth to reality – meet the chimps who eat lions

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.

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.