That nightmarish thing in the photo above isn’t a screen-used graboid prop from Tremors.

Nope.

That’s an actual creature that lives in our oceans…you know…that giant mass of water that you swim in when you vacation?

Caught off the coast of Australia by a fishing trawler, that thing is a six-foot long monster known as a frilled shark.

Frilled sharks haven’t evolved in almost 80 million years simply because a nightmare is always going to be a nightmare. On very rare occasions frilled sharks are found close to the surface because they’re dying. “Close to the surface” is around 4,000 feet below the surface.

Simon Boag of the trawling company that caught the creature:

“It does look 80 million years old. It looks prehistoric. It looks like it’s from another time! It has 300 teeth over 25 rows, so once you’re in that mouth, you’re not coming out.”

According to a marine conservation society in California there is a report of a frilled shark from 1880 measuring in at 25 feet.

Next time you go splashing around in the ocean for fun just remember…

These live there.

[NatGeo]

Jonathon Bright, a paranormal investigator who’s started adding ‘Monster Hunter’ to his resume – because who WOULDN’T want ‘Monster Hunter’ on their resume – has started sharing a photo that might be the famous camera-shy creature that has become legendary.

“Three years ago, I came to Scotland to investigate the Nessie legend and took thousands of photographs. It took me six months to look at them all and I found this one which I showed when I spoke at the Scottish Paranormal Festival in Stirling this week. After I had finished there, I came north to spend more time searching for an answer to the Nessie story. My picture is a talking point. Some people will say it is physical and the monster, others will say it is a trick of the water, others will say it is a hoax.”

It would be great if this was in fact the mysterious animal that everyone says lives in the Loch.

It would be even greater if a professional photographer with ninja-like focusing skills and a decent camera would add “Monster Hunter’ to their resume.

[The Scotsman]

Florida rides a double-edged sword.

On one side people proclaim it’s a great place to vacation. On the other side are the people who live there who are completely aware of the fact that it’s just wet sand covering a giant Hellmouth.

Seriously…the sky tries to kill people with bolts of lightning, the ground tries to swallow anything that lives on it whole and the things that crawl around aren’t like things that crawl around anywhere else.

Case in point…

A fisherman off the coast caught the Face-Grabber’s cousin the other day.

It’s called a Mantis Shrimp…and the one that was caught (at night we’d like to add) is bigger than most (and probably a sign that something’s also happening in Florida’s water because…well…it’s Florida).

Imagine if you rolled a predator, one of Ridley Scott’s aliens, a mole person, a little bit of a Grim Reaper and a highly skilled ninja into a living animal and slathered it in ugly.

Ta-Da! Mantis Shrimp.

Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Commission posted a picture of a super-sized one of these nightmares on their Facebook page and it’s gone viral with good reason…it’s terrifying and it lives in the sand…under your feet.

Next time you think about exploring Florida because you’re bored of the theme parks?

Just…here watch this and imagine one of these about 7 times the size of the one in the video…and crawling up your leg.

You’ve been warned.

[FFWC Facebook]

Giant squids are legendary.

They’ve taken on Moby Dick, Captain Nemo’s Nautilus and even a bunch of Goonies.

While giant squids have been captured in the past and alleged parts of them have surfaced here and there…seeing one in the wild has been something of a Holy Grail moment that misty-eyed scientists and cryptozoologists have dreamt about forever.

Everyone can prepare to drop your jaws because there is now video of one of these mysterious monsters going about its business deep in the Pacific Ocean.

A team of three Japanese scientists spent over 400 hours crammed in a 31 foot submersible over the course of 100 missions about 150 miles north of Iwo Jima.

At a depth of 2,066 feet, the lights from the submersible reflected onto the creature’s silver skin as it eyeballed the sub curiously before it swam off.

The Discovery Channel’s new branch, Curiosity, is keeping the footage secret until the season finale later this month when they’ll unveil it to the world for the first time…

Up until then? A lot of “Release the Kraken!” headlines.

[Discovery.com]

[ UPDATE: Giant Eye Mystery Solved! ]

Florida always seems like it’s sitting on some kind of undiscovered Hell-Mouth.

Between Bath-Salt Zombies, giant snakes slithering through your lawn, Night Creepers and lizards eating humans there’s just something…not…quite..right.

Which brings us to Pompano Beach..in Florida.

Some guy’s going for his morning stroll and spots something odd drifting around in the surf. Just like in any other horror film, the dude goes to investigate…and kicks it over…revealing at a huge eyeball staring right back at him.

“It was very fresh,” he said Thursday. “It was still bleeding when I put it in the plastic bag.”

Police referred him to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission who, frighteningly couldn’t identify what species the eye came from.

The Fish and Wildlife officers place the eyeball on ice and sent it to the Fish and Wildlife Research Institute for analysis.

In the end who really cares about where the eyeball came from…the Fish and Game Commission people should be looking for the thing that ripped apart the thing with the giant eyeball.

[Sun Sentinel]

And by sea monster – I mean most likely a whale.

‘It’s like nothing we have ever seen, it almost looks pre-historic,’ he told the Sun.

Curled up by the foot of sand dunes was the 30ft-long body of the unidentified animal with head, tail and teeth all discernible.

Experts are now examining the pictures with one suggesting it could be the body of a whale.

A spokesman for the Natural History Museum said: ‘We have spoken to one of our mammals curators, and they have confirmed the animal is probably a long-finned pilot whale – Globicephala melas.

[Cryptomundo]

Hwang, a 66-years-old fisherman living in the near area, said he has never seen anything like this in his whole life and that the fish was tied with ropes when it was first found.
Many people have flocked to see this strange specimen since its discovery, although its rotting corpse already emits a foul smell.

[International Business Times]

Mr Pickles said he saw an animal the size of three cars speed past him on the lake and watched it for about 20 seconds.

“Its skin was like a seal’s but it’s shape was completely abnormal – it’s not like any animal I’ve ever seen before.”

From PZ Meyer’s Pharyngula blog. Click through to see the full picture. This could, without alteration, be the cover of a metal album.

[Pharyngula]

The myth of the colossal squid as a fearsome aggressive predator has been sunk…

Measuring longer than a school bus and sporting tentacles covered in razor-sharp hooks, the colossal squid is the stuff of nightmares. However, new research suggests the enormous sea creature may not be the fierce hunter of legend.

This finding not only upends science’s understanding of the squid itself, but forces a reevaluation of its role in the entire ecosystem where it lives some 3,000 to 6,000 feet (914 to 1,830 meters) beneath the Antarctic sea.

This new view of the colossal squid comes from data analysis made by marine biologists Rui Rosa, of the University of Lisboa, Portugal, and Brad Seibel, of the University of Rhode Island. Rosa and Seibel looked at the relationship between metabolism (how the body’s cells turn food into energy) and body size for smaller squids in the same family and used the information to predict the metabolism of the colossal squid (Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni).

(The so-called giant squid belongs to the genus Architeuthis, a different group of animals from the colossal squid.)

They found, the squid would’ve had a slower metabolism and so moved slower than expected, waiting for prey, rather than running it down. “Everyone thought it was an aggressive predator, but the data suggests otherwise,” Rosa told LiveScience. “It’s a squid that weights half a ton with hooks in its tentacles, but our findings show it’s more like just a big blob.”

And lo, the reconfiguring of the Giant Squid’s reputation begins. Out with the “menacing death machine”, in with the “lovable fatso”. The Hurley of the sea.

[Live Science]

Headline: SEA SERPENT NEARS SHORE DISPORTS IN SURF AT OCEAN PARK STAYS BEYOND RANGE OF RIFLE SHOTS

“The first thing which attracted my attention was when a huge head bobbed up
above the surface of the water,” said Mr. Franklyn last night.

“This head was about the size of a keg. A great mouth was cut across the
lower part of it and gleaming teeth could be seen.

“I had with me a powerful pair of spyglasses and I turned them toward the
creature. From where I was standing the eyes appeared to be as large as
base balls and to protrude from the head.

“The creature was about thirty feet long and was striped.

“Running along its spine was a great fin, while two other fins protruded
from the sides. With these fins the serpent lashed the water about it to a
foam as it swam back and forth.

“I could not at first believe that I was seeing anything real and I rubbed
the lenses of my glasses in astonishment. At last I handed them to Mathews
and for several minutes he stood gazing at the creature.

The fine reporting was done by the Los Angeles Herald on September 2, 1907.

[Cryptomundo]